Download a pdf version of our programme
Download a pdf version of our book of abstracts
Friday 22 March 2024
09:00 – 09:40
Registration & Coffee – Grand Parade building reception, 58-67 Grand Parade, University of Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1AP
09:40 – 10:00
Welcome – Sallis Benney Theatre
Professor Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Dean of the School of Art and Media, University of Brighton
10:00 – 11:30 Parallel Sessions – Please choose 1 panel session or workshop to attend
Panel 1 – Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre.
Chair: Róisín Ryan-Flood & Amy Tooth-Murphy
This panel session presents chapters from the edited collection Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2024). Queering Desire explores, with unprecedented interdisciplinary scope, contemporary configurations of lesbian, bi, queer women’s and non-binary people’s experiences of identity and desire. Taking an intersectional feminist approach and incorporating new and established identities such as non-binary, masculine of centre (MOC), butch and femme, this collection examines how the changing landscape for gender and sexual identities impacts on queer culture in productive and transformative ways.
Róisín Ryan-Flood ‘Queer lineage’ as intergenerational queer interpersonal connections
Ella Ben Hagai Increased Lesbian Visibility and its Discontents
Eleanor Medhurst Carabiners and Violet Tattoos: the desire for nostalgia in online lesbian space
Panel 2 – Literature, Coloniality, Race
Room: G4. Chair: Caroline Gonda
Joao Paulo Tinoco “Control Your Tongue”: A Fronteriza Discursive Analysis from the Writing of the Chicana Mestiza Woman
Naoise Murphy Globalising the Lesbian Middlebrow
Chigozirim Miracle Nwaosu Homophobia in Afro-Queerness Stories and the Politics of Solidarity
Panel 3 – Ethics of Care
Room: G62 Chair: Catherine Aicken
Helen Aadnesgaard Queer Crip Care
Kris Clarke Queer Love and a Feminist Ethics of Care: Foundations of HIV/AIDS Care in Fresno, California
Clare Hammerton Dementia, Microaggressions, Heteronormativity, Citizenship, and the Assembly of Rights
Panel 4 – Queering Standards of Bodies, Beauty & Binary Identities
Room: 202 Chair: Katherine O’Donnell
Emily Cousens Putting the Femme in Feminist: The Male Lesbian and Sex-Positive Trans Lesbian Feminism in the 1970s
Sukrittaya Jukping The Abhorrence of the ‘Ugly’ Others: Other(gender)ing and Bordering Thai “Buffalo Ladyboys”
Theresa Schilling Interlacing Phenomenology with Queer and Feminist Theory: Insights into the Lives of Young Queer Masculine Individuals in Ireland
11:30 – 11:45 Break – Sallis Benney Ground floor hospitality area.
11:45 – 13:00 Keynote: Dr Sita Balani (Queen Mary) Ordinary but not normal: Living against the culture wars
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade Building
Introduction by Irmi Karl
13:00 – 13:45 Lunch – Sallis Benney Ground floor hospitality area.
Parallel Sessions – 13:45 – 15:15 Please choose 1 panel session or workshop to attend
Panel 5 – New Directions in Lesbian Studies
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre. Chair: Ella Ben Hagai
In this panel, three special issue guest editors for the Journal of Lesbian Studies will showcase recent collections of published scholarship focused on Chicana Lesbian thought, Decolonial approaches to reproductive justice, and Central and Eastern European lesbians’ voices to exemplify new directions in the field of Lesbian Studies.
Contributions from: Kris Clarke, Stacy I. Macías and Aleksandra Gajowy
Panel 6 – Research Approaches to Health & Community
Room: G4. Chair: Laetitia Zeeman
Kelsea McCready The Gaps in Between Law and Practice: Intersectional Barriers to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health among Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer Women and Gender-expansive People in Ontario, Canada
Helen Aadnesgaard Answering Hedva’s Call
Katharine Rimes Role Models for Sexual Minority Women: Qualitative Interview Study of Characteristics and Impact
Dulcie Newbury ‘Beyond the Binary’: Funerary Archaeology, Gendered Identity, and its Impact on Mental Health and Wellbeing
Panel 7 – Migration & Routes of Dis/Connection
Room: G62. 9 Chair: Matt Smith
Xin Pan Solidarities in the Making: Queers of Colour, Migration, Politics
Laura Sjoberg Sex Acts/Bordering Practices
Aine Bennett “Nobody fits into a box”: Bisexuality, Bordering and Asylum
Panel 8 – Queer Media Representations
Room: G63 Chair: Irmi Karl
Johanna Church Who am I? What am I? Intersex Representations in Film and Television
Megan Collier Naivety Bad Influences and Legitimate Voices – An Analysis of Autism and Queerness in UK Newspapers
Lizzie Reed “If you’re watching this, you’re on lesbian tiktok!”: LGBTAQ+ young people’s digital Cultures and the Memeification of Identity
Tanvi Kanchan “Instagram is like a karela” Transnational digital queer politics in India
Workshop 1 Lucy Aphramor Queering Nutrition Narratives to Animate Anti-Colonial Imaginaries and Liberatory Practice
Room: 204
15:15-15:30 – Refreshment Break, Sallis Benney Ground floor hospitality area.
15.30-17.00 Parallel Sessions: Please choose 1 panel session or workshop to attend
Workshop 2 – Building Lesbian Community Internationally: The Lesbians of Kakuma Camp
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre.
Chair: Joe Jukes
Juliet Wabule and Helen Thompson will facilitate a group of lesbian human rights defenders from Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya, to join the conference directly online. LGBT+ people in Uganda and Kenya face arbitrary arrests, extortion, loss of employment, and reduced access to healthcare. The lesbians of Block 13 have not only survived violence from families and communities in their home countries, they have continued to face rape, beatings, arson and other attacks in the camp where they have sought refuge. They have faced these attacks with courage and stubborn resolve and have organised themselves into a community, providing protection, medical care, and schooling for their children, while continuing to work towards the hope of finding permanent homes in a safer country. This workshop will offer the opportunity to meet some of the lesbians of Kakuma Camp via zoom, to hear them talk about their lives and articulate their needs, and to learn how you can extend the boundaries of lesbian community by supporting their struggles.
Panel 9 – Making and Mapping Networks
Room: G4. Chair: Olu Jenzen
Lizzie Reed Participatory collaborative mapping of…Ikea? Finding lesbian community in a small city
Beth Charlton Global Spaces and Social Lives: Lesbian London’s National and International Connections (c. 1980-c.2000)
Katharina Schütz An Affective Historiography of Munich’s Lesbian Bars: Cross-Temporal Worldbuilding
Jacqueline Gibbs, Aura Lehtonen and Billy Holzberg The politics of good sex and queer solidarities in Feel Good and Work in progress
Workshop 3 – Lesbian Lives Lived Well – Supporting Our Own Wellbeing
Room: 202
Karina Murray leads this workshop which aims to open up discussion on what we do well when it comes to minding ourselves and each other, with the aim of equipping participants with practical strategies for minding their health in three crucial areas: social, emotional, and physical wellbeing. The Lesbian community is a highly resilient group that has spent decades advocating for equal rights while also prioritising individual wellbeing – a challenging task when the world can, at times, be against us.
Panel 10 – Autobiography in Literature & Film: Loss, Commemoration & Resistance
Room: G62. Chair: Kath Browne
Caroline Gonda Vanishing Stories: Meditations on Community, Grief and Loss
Lalu Esra Ozban A Tribute to Zeliş Deniz: Tracing “Prince Charming Don’t Come in Vain”
Sally O’Driscoll Waiting for the Coup
Film screening of LOAFERS documentary – Room: 204. Orla Egan, Cork LGBT Archive
17:30 – 20:00 Conference Reception.
Venue: Horatio’s Bar, Brighton Palace Pier, Madeira Dr, Brighton BN2 1TW
The drinks bar will be open throughout.
17:30-18:15 Book Event: Róisín Ryan-Flood & Amy Tooth Murphy (eds) launching their book Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity AND Yvette Taylor launching her book Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics. Short introductions and Q&A.
18.15-18.30 Professor Sasha Roseneil, Vice-Chancellor, University of Sussex
18:30-19:00 Rainbow Chorus performance: The LGBTQ+ SATB choir based in Brighton & Hove celebrates diversity through music and welcome people from all sections of our community.
Saturday March 23rd
09:00 – 09:30
Registration and coffee – Grand Parade building reception, 58-67 Grand Parade, University of Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1AP
09:30 – 11:00 Parallel Sessions – Please choose 1 panel session, workshop or screening to attend
Panel 11 – Lesbian, Queer, and Trans Perspectives on Gentleman Jack and the (re)discovery of Anne Lister
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre. Chair: Ella Ben Hagai
This panel features innovative new scholarship on Anne Lister and the Gentleman Jack phenomena published in a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Panelists offer new reading of lesbian sex acts in Lister’s diaries as they compare to Lister’s depiction in different television dramas, a trans perspective on Lister’s understanding of her gender, and an exploration of queer pilgrimage to key sites associated with Anne Lister and an account of Lister’s own travel in her quest for lesbian kinship.
Contributions from: Ella Ben Hagai, Charley Matthews, Mette Hildeman Sjölin and Sarah Wingrove
Panel 12 – Touching Archives
Room: M2. Chair: Kate O’Riordan
Anna Sephton Other Lives of the Image: Collaborative Film-making in Engaging a Queer Archive from 1930s South Africa
Katherine Hubbard Queer Connections Then and Now: Me, Margaret Lowenfeld and Margaret Mead
Tuula Juvonen Creating Networks and Solidarities with Friends of Queer History
Han Tiernan Reading the Lesbian Pages from Ireland’s GCN Archive
Panel 13 – Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity II
Room: G62. Chair: Róisín Ryan-Flood & Amy Tooth Murphy
This panel session presents chapters from the edited collection Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2024). Queering Desire explores, with unprecedented interdisciplinary scope, contemporary configurations of lesbian, bi, queer women’s and non-binary people’s experiences of identity and desire. Taking an intersectional feminist approach and incorporating new and established identities such as non-binary, masculine of centre (MOC), butch and femme, this collection examines how the changing landscape for gender and sexual identities impacts on queer culture in productive and transformative ways.
Amy Tooth-Murphy The butch on the ferry: The affect and effect of butch longing
Sarah-Joy Ford Beloved: Crafting Lesbian Desire and Femme Intimacies with the Ladies of Llangollen
Kimberley Mather ‘In their loving gaze I saw who I could be’: Revisiting the butch/femme couple as joint subject through Esther Newton’s My Butch Career
Workshop 4 – Lesbian/Dyke Solidarity in Action
Room: G4
Naoise Murphy leads this workshop which brings together lesbian/dyke activists from UK queer and abolitionist groups, including Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, the Dyke Project and SOAS Detainee Support, who will draw on their experiences to spark a conversation about lesbian solidarity organising today. From New York to Nicaragua, from #Repealthe8th to #EndSARS, lesbians and dykes have long been at the forefront of global political struggle, organising on our own behalf and in solidarity with other movements. Some of the questions this workshop will pose include: Why have lesbians/dykes been central to global liberation movements? What tactics and priorities can we learn from the history of lesbian/dyke activism? What does solidarity organising look like for dykes/lesbians in the global North? What should it look like? What is lesbian/dyke organising? And what is organising with lesbians/dykes in it? How do lesbians/dykes relate to the rest of the queer community in organising contexts? Is there a difference between dyke organising and lesbian organising? What work do lesbians/dykes/queer women/nonbinary people do in organising? How are activist spaces gendered? How do these dynamics change in an exclusively dyke/lesbian space? How do we relate to histories of separatism? How do we build solidarity across difference within dyke/lesbian spaces stratified by race/class/ability/gender identity etc? How does rising transphobia and queerphobia in the UK affect or alter dynamics of lesbian/dyke solidarity organising? What is the future of lesbian/dyke solidarity organising? The workshop will begin with short reflections and provocations from lesbian/dyke solidarity activists. It will then open out into a wider conversation, providing a space to explore the distinctiveness of lesbian/dyke solidarity organising today. Attendees are invited to share their thoughts and experiences, drawing on knowledge from activist or academic contexts.
Workshop 5 – Let’s Make Queer History
Room: 202
Ellie Priest will lead the workshop as an interactive presentation focused on Queer methods of producing history. The presentation will explore the importance of community history making in the making and sustaining of Queer community and activism. They will begin by discussing some key theoretical practices in Queer history making, drawing particularly on the works of Jack Halberstam Ann Cvetkovich and Eve Sedgwick. We will then explore some particular examples of Queer historical projects, with particular focus given to Ann Cvetkovich’s idea of ‘archives of feeling’. We will consider the ‘ephemeral’ and ‘fictional’ nature of Queer history as well as emotional and reparative imperative of doing such work. I would also like to share some of the work produced by participants of my research. My research focuses on the ways that Queer communities make their own histories in the wake of enforced secrecy and erasure, and how it affects us to do such work. Due to this I employ the use of workshops within my research where participants are given space to produce their own responses to ‘Queer History’. These responses often take the form of zines exploring personal and communal histories. I would like to bring this approach to this proposed workshop/presentation. During the presentation participants will be encouraged to produce their own responses, in the form of artwork, collage or writing (fiction or non-fiction), allowing them to practically engage in types of Queer history work being discussed and reflect in how we are all producers and ‘users’ of history within our community. Following the presentation participants will be given time to discuss their work.
Roundtable Discussion – Lesbian Sauna and Translesbofeminist Sexual Perspectives
Room: 204
Mercè Nebot, Marta Vusquets, Irene Cruz and Alba Juventeny lead this roundtable and community discussion, drawing on the experiences of Bolleras al vapor (Steamed dykes) is a lesbotransfeminist collective located in Barcelona that every two months facilitates a non mixt (flinta, no cis men) party at a gay sauna. The space aims to be free from all kinds of phobic attitudes (lgtbqia+phobic, racist, ableist, ageist, and a long so on). Bolleras al vapor points out that in a city in a city where gay saunas for cis men are abundant, there are almost no non-mixed spaces in which we can sexually interact with each other and explore our pleasure. We claim our pleasures and our sexualities as political and, in particular, we claim the possibility of promiscuity as a space that can be inhabited from joy. Up to this date Bolleras al vapor has held up to 10 parties with much success. In this round table we would like to propose that we collectively discuss and think about stereotypes, notions and realities of what lesbotransfeminist sexualities currently are, challenge them, and through speculative fiction think about what the future could look like.
11:00 – 12:15 Keynote: Professor Niharika Banerjea with Uma and Dhiren Borisa, Lesbian Standpoint: articulating liveability with Uma
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade Building
Introduced by Professor Kath Browne
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch – Sallis Benney Ground floor hospitality area.
ELC* Launch of Academic Circle 12.30- 13.15
13:15 – 14:45 Parallel Sessions – Please choose 1 session to attend
Panel 14 Queer Women, Music, Time and Spaces
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre. Chair: Lucia Affaticati
This panel will explore intergenerational spaces and temporal zones of queer women’s musical culture, activism, and reception, drawing attention to the intersectional dynamics of these imaginaries and locations. Pivoting between virtual cyberspace, global online queer congregations, and London of the 80s and 90s, queer women’s spaces and time will be explored where music brings queer women together.
Contributions from: Lucia Affaticati, Anjali Prashar-Savoie, Katherine Griffiths and Wren Jayasekara
Panel 15 – The Archive as a Resource for Connection
Room: M2. Chair: Zoe Rubenstein
Katherine Wallace Searching for Lesbian Lives: Ultilising Gay Switchboards and Lesbian Lines to Understand Queer Women’s Experiences in 1970s and 1980s Britain
Louisa Bethan Rimmer Coming ‘in’ to the Archive: Reading the Reoriented Closet in the Archives of Common Lives / Lesbian Lives Magazine (1981-1996)
Workshop 6 – The Body Hotel: Queer Movement Celebrations
Room: G4
Thania Acarón facilitates this dynamic, interactive workshop, where we will have a chance to reconnect, revitalise and celebrate our queer identity. We will explore the themes of connection and isolation through movement, music, and arts-based reflection. You will explore ways in which you can cultivate a positive relationship to your body and connect and engage with others in a safe environment. All activities will include elements of creativity, play and dance/movement. There is no need for prior movement experience, as you can tailor each activity to your own comfort level and ability. Let’s move together! The Body Hotel CIC is a Wales-based social enterprise focusing on movement for wellbeing which focuses on employee wellbeing and working with underrepresented communities. The company has provided services for Wales NHS, LGBTQ+ organisations across the UK and international training workshops and research on creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ Global Majority people.
Workshop 7 – Proclaiming the Category “LGBTQ+ Women” through Community-Based Research: Findings of the US National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey
Room: 204
Dr. Jaime M. Grant facilitates this session. In 2019, US-based activists Urvashi Vaid and Dr. Jaime M. Grant launched the first national LGBTQ Women’s survey, gathering a dream team of veteran activists and researchers to co-create an original 170-question instrument that in the end drew 5002 respondents. https://lalgbtcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/LGBT-Womens-Survey-Full-2023.pdf
The study invited: Any woman or non-binary person who has or does identify as a womxn, and centers their emotional, social, sexual and/or familial life on women, and looked at key domains of our lives including identity, education, housing, economic security, health and health access, disability, policing and incarceration, family and parenting, sociality, sex/sexual practices, religious upbringing and religious life, aging, political and civic engagement, and interpersonal violence. In her final activist project, Vaid, who passed in May of 2022, aimed to push back on TERF destruction of LGBTQ+ women’s community and to recreate LGBTQ+ and women’s movement agendas in the US and beyond. A passionate and proud lesbian, Vaid often noted that lesbian “is a verb” in the study, and its findings demonstrate how racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ animus, and fatphobia distribute discrimination and violence in LGBTQ+ womxn’s lives across a broad swath of identities. Dr. Grant will share findings of the report which includes data on 15,000 write-ins to the question: What are your 3 favorite things about being an LGBTQ+ woman? and invite conversation about community-based methods as revolutionary fuel.
Panel 16 – Kinship
Room: G62. Chair: Joe Jukes
Erin Lux Kinship, Family & Support Networks in LGBTI+ Communities
Xiaowei Long Reimagining Kinship Through Lala Families in Transitional China
Moss Berke Luminous Matter of the LesbianQueerTrans* Domestic: Home Videos as a Lesbian World-making Practice
Panel 17 – Global, Local & Glocal Responses to ‘Anti-Gender’
Room: 202. Chair: Laetitia Zeeman
Kath Browne Insights from the Beyond Opposition project: Everyday Experiences of those who are opposed to/concerned about socio-legal changes to sexualities/genders/abortion in Ireland, Great Britain and Canada
Sarah Lamble Are Gender-critical Feminists Neo-fascists? Situating Britain’s Gender-critical Movement within the Wider Transnational Anti-Gender Movement
Evie Browne How are LGBTQI+ Movements Fighting Gender-based Violence in Challenging Contexts Experiencing ‘Anti-gender’ Backlash?
14:45-15:00
Refreshment Break: Sallis Benney Ground floor hospitality area.
15.00 – 16:45 Parallel Sessions Please choose 1 session to attend
Panel 18 – Strategies of Global Literary Resistance
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre. Chair: Caroline Gonda
Juliette Staroz The Representation of Revolts and Revolution in French Queer Feminist Literature
Denyse Rodrigues Contested Books: Old Wine in a New Bottle
Anna Klimek Solidarity and Community in Polish Lesbians’ Autobiographical Writing
Phoebe O’Leary Intertemporal Connections: Critical Nostalgia and Lesbian AIDS Activism in Performance
Panel 19 – Encounters with Exiles, Challenging Lines
Room: G4. Chair: Lis Bundock
Wendy Sloane ‘Why did Putin invade Ukraine? Blame it on the Gays’
Victoria Suvoroff Gatekeeping of Queer Art-Practices in the Context of Exile
Cat Walker Who gives a ££££? The Inadequacies of UK Funding for International LGBTQI Issues
Panel 20 – Trans Ethics & Plurisexual (Un)Belonging
Room: M2. Chair: Olu Jenzen
Mijke van der Drift Trans Ethics: refusing Separability by Embracing Complicity
Jay Szpilka Please, Love, Hatecrime Me Real Bad – Extreme Trans BDSM as a Practice of Survival
Robin Rose Breetveld Knowing Your Place: The Artistic Queer Space & The Power of Narrative Ownership
Trude Sundberg The Other Gendered Activist Social Researcher
Panel 21 – Creating New Worlds
Room: G62. Chair: Evie Browne
Clare Geraghty Queer Feminist Hip Hop as a Means of Creating Inclusive Feminist Spaces
Ruth Griggs The Forgotten Potential of Queer Vegan Activism
Simone Cavalcante and Alexa Santos Glocalesbian: Glocalizing Lesbian Experiences, Promoting Community Building, and Fostering Innovation in LGBTQI+ Volunteering in Portugal
Beatriz Santos Barreto Queer Christian Utopia: The Activism of LGBTQ+ Christians in Brazil
Panel 22 – Twentieth-Century British Lesbian Communities
Room: 202 Chair: Jane Traies
Alison Oram Primroses and neo-Paganism: Lesbian Spiritual Connections to Rural England 1870s-1970s
Katherine Hubbard Lesbian Community and Activism in Britain 1940s–1970s: An Interview with Cynthia Reid
Ellen Durban Grassroots Support for Married Lesbian Mothers in England, 1970-1990
Jane Traies ‘The work of international liaison’ – Caroline Spurgeon and her Circle
16:45-17:45 – Final Plenary: Creativity in Flux
Fisun Yalçınkaya, Büşra Mutlu, Seçil Epik and Şafak Şule Kemancı
Room: Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade
As part of the 2024 Lesbian Lives conference, we have invited a group of Turkish queer feminist publishers, editors, and art critics to lead a discussion on queer feminist creative work, across activist and institutional realms. In our roundtable discussion, we delve into the intricate landscape of queer feminist creative work, traversing both independent and institutional realms amidst escalating political and social tensions. Seçil Epik, Şafak Şule Kemancı, Büşra Mutlu, and Fisun Yalçınkaya will discuss challenges and opportunities in the creative field, navigating diverse strategies, unexpected encounters, and delightful surprises along the way.
Chair: Olu Jenzen
21:00- 02:00 Conference Social: Traumfrau presents – The Dyke Bop.
Join us for the conference After Party as a night of DJs, Disco, and live acts, for dykes, lesbians, bois, butches, daddies, femmes and thems. It’s going to be a night of sapphic DJs, disco, art and performances. These include DJ Ritu, DJ Sheilds, B4B and live acts! As the biggest lesbian party of the year, are you coming?
Tickets £12 – £17 pre-purchase only via Eventbrite.co.uk – see our conference afterparty ‘The Dyke Bop’ booking site.
Venue: North Laine Brewhouse, Brighton BN1 4AA.
Download a pdf version of our programme
Conference Delegates Offer from Ditchling Museum
The lovely Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, just outside Brighton, is offering delegates tickets at half price for their current exhibition:
Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles
Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft celebrates the pioneering textile studio of partners in life and work Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen.
The pair were two of the most significant textile designers of the modernist period, yet, like many of their peers they remain largely unknown – until now.
Open Wednesday – Sunday until 14 April 2024
Get 50% off pre-booked entry tickets with the special code: LLC50
(Tickets must be booked in advance.)
Registration
register for the conference at our registration website
see our conference afterparty ‘The Dyke Bop’ booking site.