University of Westminster is hosting a conference to bring together students, academics and activists to explore ideas on how to challenge prejudices against LGBTQ persons and make academia and society more diverse and inclusive. The conference will take place over two days in our Regent Street Campus. Registration is required individually for each day.
Day 1, Thursday 29 June
The first day of the conference will have sessions exploring the diversity of our LGBTQ identities. The event will conclude with Open MiQ+ Night (separate registration required).
- 12.30–12.45pm: Registration
- 12.45–1pm: Opening of the Conference (Professor Dibyesh Anand and Rajat Shah)
- 1–2pm: Homonationalism and Queer Defiance in India: Bridging the Activist/academic gap (Shreshtha Nalsar, Anish Gawande and Dibyesh Anand)
- 2–2.15pm: Tea break
- 2.15–3.30pm: Doing/being Queer in Higher Education: Learning/listening/disrupting together (Pippa Catterall , Jo Hills, Stav Bee, Anick Soni)
- What are the ontologies of queer in Higher Education
- What does it mean to be a queer ally in Higher Education?
- What are the opportunities for queer disruption in Higher Education?
- How does intersectionality make a difference to queer lived experience in Higher Education?
- 3.30–4.15pm: Moments of Queer Joy – with coffee/tea (UWSU)
- 4.15–4.45pm: Worlding the Queer: A discussion with Professor Michael Bosia, Saint Michael’s College, Vermont, United States
- How does queer politics connect us to global struggles for recognition?
- How does your work on struggles for LGBT rights and the security of sexual and gender minorities around the world move from the local to the global (and back again)?
- How do debates about ‘woke’ actively seek to subvert the presence, possibilities, and disruption of queer communities?
- Academia versus Activism: are they incompatible?
- 4.45–5.45pm: National Student Pride and the University of Westminster: Working in Partnership for Inclusive Education (Tom Guy and Celine Bagtas)
- 5.45–7pm: Reception
- 7.30–10pm: Open MiQ+
Day 2, Friday 30 June
The second day will feature sessions exploring queer methodologies and transnational LGBTQ+ activisms. The event will conclude with a screening of a film documenting the experiences of LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers in the UK.
- 10.30–11am: Tea and coffee
- 11am–1pm: Pride in the Field: LGBTQ+ Inclusive Fieldwork Workshop
- In the workshop, Martin Zebracki will discuss the ESRC LSSI Impact Acceleration project Pride in the Field. Pride in the Field is the first project of its kind to shift focus to impact policies and practices supporting the needs and activities of fieldworkers identified/affiliated with LGBTQ+ communities. Through knowledge exchange, developing community support and co-production of resources, Pride in the Field supports global beneficiaries in pursuing socially important fieldwork in (more) inclusive and safe ways
- Dr Martin Zebracki is an Associate Professor of Critical Human Geography at the University of Leeds with expertise in cultural geography, public art, sexuality and inclusivity
- 1–2.30pm: Lunch
- 2.30–4pm: From Grassroots to Transnational LGBTQ+ Activism: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities
- This roundtable will bring together academics, activists and organizers from around the world to discuss issues, challenges and opportunities arising from grassroots and transnational LGBTQ+ activisms across various contexts. Speakers include Fundi Ndaba (Soweto Pride/Forum for the Empowerment of Women) and Ntsupe Mohapi (Ekurhuleni Pride), Olimpia Burchiellaro (Westminster), Daniel Conway (Westminster), Vinicius Zanoli (Berlin) and Razan Ghazzawi (Berlin)
- Fundi Ndaba is one of the organizers of Soweto Pride in and acting director of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, Johannesburg
- Ntsupe Mohapi is an LGBTQ+ activist and co-founder/organizer of Ekurhuleni Pride, Johannesburg
- Daniel Conway is a Senior Lecturer of Politics and International Relations. His work is situated at the intersection of Feminist International Relations, political sociology and queer theory, focusing on the politics of LGBTQ+ rights and activism. He held a 2018-19 Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship studying 'The Global Politics of Pride: LGBTQ+ Activism, Assimilation and Resistance', and conducted comparative fieldwork on LGBTQ+ Pride events across Africa, Asia and North America
- Vinicius Zanoli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. He is an Anthropologist and Social Scientist interested in the study of politics and social movements, especially in what concerns the LGBTQIA+ movement in Latin America and its relationships with other social movements
- Razan Ghazzawi is a Syrian-Palestinian blogger, campaigner, activist, and scholar. They received their PhD in Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of Sussex, Brighton. They also hold an MA in Gender, Sexuality, and the Body from the University of Leeds, UK, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Balamand University in Lebanon. In their thesis “Pedagogies of Everyday Queer Protests: Rethinking Political Subjectivity and Violence in Syria and Lebanon 2011-2021,” they examine everyday queer and trans encounters at checkpoints, prisons, and queer asylum in the contexts of the “war on terror” and the “refugee crisis”
- Olimpia Burchiellaro is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Westminster, working on a project on homo-capitalism exploring the complicities and resistances between global corporations and local activists in Kenya, Argentina and Brazil
- 4–5.30pm: Film Screening on 'No Pride in Detention: LGBTQ+ Asylum Seekers in the UK'
- LGBTQI+ people come to the UK to flee persecution. But instead of finding safety here, some are locked up in detention centres where they face LGBTQI-phobic bullying, harassment and abuse. Join us for a short film screening, talk and Q&A on LGBTQI+ experiences of immigration detention and how we can resist this unjust and inhumane practice in the UK, with Qussai Ramzi (Rainbow Migration)
- Qussai Ramzi is a member of Rainbow Migration‘s campaigns advisory group
Pride Celebration Breakfast, 1 July
The University of Westminster is pleased to invite current students, alumni, colleagues, participants of 'Westminster Conversations: Queering Academia, Intersectionally' conference, and guests to a Pride celebration breakfast on Saturday 1 July at our Regent Street Campus from 10am to 12pm.
This will be an opportunity to reflect upon the University’s own commitment to advancing LGBTQ+ equality and to honour its rich (and often overlooked) LGBTQ+ heritage. This will also mark the conclusion of our 'Westminster Conversations: Queering Academia, Intersectionally' Conference. The University of Westminster’s Pride Breakfast will commemorate the past 51 years and the evolution of Pride as a social and political movement; acknowledging those who have come before us and their achievements.
Hosted by the University’s EDI Committee and Q+ Network in collaboration with the Westminster LGBT Forum, and with Dr Thomas Moore and Professor Dibyesh Anand as lead organisers, the event will be a chance to honour the contribution LGBTQ+ communities make to realise our mission to be the world’s most inclusive university. Our Q+ Network works collaboratively with a number of other colleague networks and student societies within the University to foster an intersectional culture for equality, diversity, and inclusion at the University.
Register for the UOW Pride Breakfast
