University of Westminster celebrates Pride Month

The University supports events, research, teaching and outreach relating to LGBTQI+ issues throughout the year. The Pride month in June started with the installation of the LGBTQI+ progress flag above the doors at its headquarters at Regent Campus. It then hosted various events throughout the month and into July.

The Pride Month concluded with a large international conference on ‘Queering Academia Intersectionally’ on 29 and 30 June. The aim of this conference was to bring together students, academics and activists to explore ideas on how to challenge prejudices against LGBTQI+ people and make academia and society more diverse and inclusive.

Day one of the Conference was opened by Professor Dibyesh Anand, Co-chair of University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, and Rajat Shah, outgoing President of the student LGBTI Society, and this was then followed by discussions on several issues impacting LGBTQ+ communities in the UK as well as globally.

Shreshtha Das, Anish Gawande and Dibyesh Anand spoke on Homonationalism and Queer Defiance in India in the first panel, and then Professor Pippa Catterall, Jo Hills, Stav Bee, Anick Soni and Peace Pitchayut headed up a discussion on queering as a process in higher education.

Attendees then came together with refreshments to reflect on moments of queer joy, and this was followed by Professor Michael Bosia from Saint Michael’s College, Vermont, United States in conversation with Dibyesh Anand on worlding the queer and issues such as how to move the work from the local to the global.

Tom Guy and Celine Bagtas then concluded the first day of the conference by discussing the vision and practice of working together to generate queer friendly spaces through the National Student Pride. In recent years, National Student Pride has been hosted at the University of Westminster.

Pride celebrations continued into the evening with an Open Miq+ evening organised by Westminster’s Q+ colleague network and the Students’ Union. The event took place in the Hideaway at Regent Campus’ and brought together musicians, comedians, spoken word artists and entertainers who are either part of, or allies of, the LGBTQI+ community.

Day two of the Queering Academia Intersectionally Conference took place on Friday 30 June and featured sessions exploring queer methodologies and transnational LGBTQ+ activisms. Dr Martin Zebracki from Leeds University led a workshop on inclusive research fieldwork and ethics. This was followed by a roundtable with academics and activists to discuss issues, challenges and opportunities arising from grassroots and transnational LGBTQ+ activisms across various contexts. Speakers included Fundi Ndaba from Soweto Pride and the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, Ntsupe Mohapi from Ekurhuleni Pride, Dr Olimpia Burchiellaro from the University of Westminster, Dr Daniel Conway also from Westminster, and Dr Vinicius Zanoli and Dr Razan Ghazzawi from Berlin. They spoke of their experiences of organising and the importance of connecting academia and activism. The last formal panel at the conference was a film screening and discussion with Qussai Ramzi of Rainbow Coalition and Lonceny Kourouma, a doctoral researcher in the School of Social Sciences of the University, on specific challenges faced by LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in the UK.

Westminster’s Pride Month celebrations concluded on Saturday 1 July with an annual Pride celebration breakfast hosted by the University’s EDI Committee’c Co-chair Professor Dibyesh Anand with Q+ Network’s Mariia Kogan, Maria Jula, Michelle Medina Smith and others.

The breakfast was a chance for Westminster to honour the contribution LGBTQI+ communities make to realise Westminster’s mission to be the world’s most diverse and inclusive university.

About Westminster’s Pride Month celebrations, Professor Dibyesh Anand said: “Pride Month is about recognising the values of agitation, allyship, questioning, camaraderie, resistance and inclusion that have shaped LGBTQI+ identities and lives. As a queer person myself I feel confident in bringing my whole self to work, and as someone with leadership responsibilities, I want to work with others, and intersectionally, to ensure everyone feels similarly comfortable not only for a month but the entire year. That is the Westminster ethos I am proud of!”

Find out more about Westminster’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.