Lisa Downing is an author, academic, and cultural commentator. Her writing resists disciplinary silos. Across her books and articles, she brings a literary critic’s sensitivity to language together with penetrating analysis of ‘difficult’ concepts such as (ab)normality, exceptionality, and the gendering of freedom.
A guiding interest in subjects that may be perceived as unsavoury, but that tell us much about modern culture, underpins her work. It is visible from her early studies of the so-called sexual perversions/ paraphilias, through her writing on female terrorists and murderers, to her acclaimed monograph that asks why female self-interest is seen as so shocking, Selfish Women (2019; expanded second edition coming in 2027).
At the centre of Downing’s work is a sustained examination of cultural norms: how they arise, how they operate, and how they limit the kinds of subjects we are permitted to be. Her newest book, Against Affect (2026), takes aim at a particularly pervasive orthodoxy: the contemporary cultural obsession with emotion. In place of the ‘affective turn’ she argues for a redistribution of reason and a feminist neo-Enlightenment — not to sanitise feeling, but to resist the slide into post-truth sentimentality.
Lisa also works extensively in public engagement. She has collaborated with visual artists (notably a multi-exhibition project on female terrorism with Navine G. Khan-Dossos) and with mental health experts, through partnerships with the American Psychiatric Association (on the paraphilia diagnosis) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists (on gender and extremism). She also broadcasts and writes opinion pieces for a range of media outlets. Her interests outside writing include fine dining, photography, architecture, and aviation.