Given that Brighton is seen as the LGBTQ+ capital of the UK, it’s natural that we cover issues relating to sexuality in our Geography and Environment degrees. Students can even take our specialist module on Geographies of Genders and Sexualities in their third year. Cementing our reputation in this area, this year we brought the world’s only regular conference that unites Geography and sexuality to Brighton.
The European Geographies of Sexualities Conference runs every two years, with previous outings in Brussels, Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome, Prague and Cadiz. For 2024 Geography lecturers Nick McGlynn and Jason Lim, plus Geography PhD student Joe Jukes, brought the conference to the University of Brighton (Sept 2-3). We were also supported by fantastic student volunteers Beau and Fanni from our BA(Hons) Geography and BSc(Hons) Environmental Sciences degrees. They got the chance to meet some of the researchers and scholars whose work they read in their courses!
Although the conference is in theory for ‘European’ Geographers, in fact the conference attracts speakers from all over the world. This year around 110 speakers from 22 countries were represented including Brazil, Iceland, Finland, Czechia, France, Greece, India, Palestine, Japan, Israel, China, Hungary and more! We didn’t just have academic presenters – the conference saw a lot of presentations from PhD students and even some Masters and Undergraduate students showcasing their dissertation research.
The conference theme this year was Uncomfortable Spaces, inviting speakers to grapple with the spatial politics of difficult conversations and challenging emotions. Session themes were very diverse, covering everything from the micro-politics of LGBTQ social spaces to mapping sexual abuse against women; from censorship at universities to the exclusion of bisexuality in geographic research; and from LGBTQ refugee policies to the politics of sex in post-colonial countries.
Some of the ‘uncomfortable’ discussions at the conference included the dominance of the English language in global research. Post-colonial Geographers have encouraged us to think about language as political, and so speakers asked who can access the knowledge created in universities when so much research is only published in English. They also pointed out that lots of important research will be undertaken by non-English speakers, but we may never see the benefits of it simply because it’s not in English. New automated translation tools were tested at the conference, and some speakers presented in other languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and British Sign Language. But it’s clear that there’s more work to be done in creating a more globally and linguistically inclusive Geography!
Despite these uncomfortable discussions, European Geographies of Sexualities was a very warm and sociable conference with a real sense of friendship and camaraderie amongst everyone present. We’re looking forward to the next outing of the conference in 2026 – maybe our own undergraduate students will be presenting their dissertation research at it!
Find out more about studying Geography at Brighton here.
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