Jessica Gregory

Jessica Gregory is a doctoral researcher in History at the University of Kent. Her PhD is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. CDP PhD’s involve a partnership between a Higher Education Institution and heritage organisation. Jessica’s CDP studentship is partnered with the National Archives in London.

Prior to taking up this studentship, Jessica studied Fine Art at BA level and Cultural and Critical Theory at MA level. She worked for ten years in cultural heritage institutions, most recently as a curatorial assistant within the specialism of modern archives and manuscripts.  

Instagram @indecencyarchivist

Blogs: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/author/jessica-gregory/  

Jessica’s research examines print that was suppressed and outlawed under Britain’s 19th and 20th century censorship laws. It examines the intricacies of policing, prosecution, and control that the state employed against print deemed too sexually explicit and/or ‘immoral’. Her thesis focuses on the dissemination and interception of advertisements considered indecent because of their sex-related goods promotions in the early twentieth century. It examines their characteristics, material qualities and varied means of distribution, as well as, the role such advertisements played in the dissemination of sex-related goods under oppressive legal and cultural mediation.

Jessica’s primary research is based in her partner institution, the National Archives, where she draws on extensive governmental records to draw out the censorship priorities of the state and the response of illicit advertisers. This research therefore examines items of mass production, often ephemeral and low-cost productions whose sexual content was deemed offensive, indecent, and corrupting.

Her academic research also examines wider histories of censorship, the concept of indecency, histories of sex and sex-related commerce, and queer histories.  

  Dr Claire Jones   and Dr Julie Anderson

PhD Working Title

Selling Indecency: Illicit Advertisements and the Dissemination of the Sexual