Rate My Professor Leigh Boucher

Associate Professor Leigh Boucher serves in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University, within the Department of History and Archaeology in the Faculty of Arts. He completed his undergraduate studies and PhD at the University of Melbourne, followed by a research fellowship in London prior to joining Macquarie University. Boucher's scholarship focuses on the history of sexuality, gender, citizenship, and settler colonialism in Australia and the British Empire. His research interests encompass the construction and representation of difference in liberal democratic political and popular cultures, including changing constructions of manhood in nineteenth-century Victoria, anthropological depictions of the Aborigine in nineteenth-century Australia, and the impact of evolving ideas about sexuality on citizenship in late-modern Australia. He has led ARC Discovery Projects as Primary Chief Investigator, such as 'Gender, Sexuality and Australian Citizenship since 1969,' which investigates how 1970s activists asserted that 'the personal is political' to drive law reforms on abortion, homosexuality, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS care, same-sex marriage, and related issues, and 'HIV/AIDS in Darlinghurst: Forging Community in Catastrophe, 1983-1996,' documenting community formation amid the Sydney AIDS crisis.

Boucher's major publications include the co-authored book Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Australia (Monash University Publishing, 2024), with Michelle Arrow, Robert Reynolds, and Barbara Baird, tracing fifty years of feminist and LGBTIQ+ activism and its transformative effects on Australian political culture. Other key works are 'The Lusher motion: women's citizenship and the surprising defence of abortion by Australian parliamentarians' (History Australia, 2026), 'The politics of Sydney’s gay and lesbian Mardi Gras' with Michelle Arrow (Events and politics, 2026), 'A "small measure of justice": homosexual law reform in Victoria' (Fault lines: Australia's unequal past, 2025), and 'Kylie's magical place in Australian queer culture: an origin and a turning point' (Qtopia Sydney, 2025). He supervises PhD and MRes students in Australian history, gender and sexuality, citizenship, settler colonialism, popular culture, and historiography, with recent theses on queer counselling services, gay immigration, and identity politics. Boucher's public contributions feature media discussions on Mardi Gras challenges and AIDS history, the podcast 'Untold Stories: Darlinghurst AIDS Crisis,' and essays like 'Friday essay: public "pash ons" and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it' (The Conversation, 2024). His work underscores the storytelling and struggle behind uneven advances in rights for sexual and gender minorities.