How can we protect aspects of queer and trans history for future generations, and what are the best ways to do so? Which aspects of these histories are most challenging to preserve, and how might we face those challenges? Are there some elements of LGBTQ+ lives and experiences that should not be preserved? Where should collections of queer and trans materials be housed, and who should be responsible for looking after them? In what ways do the workings of LGBTQ+ archives intersect with regional, national, and international community politics? How do the problematic colonial histories of many European countries impact on the workings and holdings of their LGBTQ+ archives? How can alliances be forged, and strategies put in place, to safeguard the cultural heritage of minority and subaltern groups more broadly?

Join us on 20 June 2023 for a roundtable discussion that will begin to explore these questions – and others. Taking part in the conversation will be three leading archivists and scholars from across Europe and Scandinavia: Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Tone Hellesund, and Wigbertson Julian Isenia (detailed bios available below). They will come together to share their experiences of working with queer and trans archival collections, including creating LGBTQ+ archives and deciding where to house them. The speakers will also unpack the ways in which queer and trans materials have value as portals into broader political concerns, revealing stories of public and private practices, of migration and exile, of community debate and conflict. Ultimately, the discussion will aim to identify potential ways in which queer and trans archives, across Europe and beyond, can be sustained for posterity.

‘Queer and Trans Archives: Safeguarding Histories, Designing Futures' is the launch event of the ‘Perverse Collections: Building Europe’s Queer and Trans Archives’ project, which runs from June 2023 to May 2025. ‘Perverse Collections’ involves researchers based in the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, and is funded by JPICH. The project is led by Glyn Davis (University of St Andrews), working alongside Principal Investigators Eliza Steinbock (University of Maastricht) and Juan Antonio Suárez (University of Murcia). The central question the project asks is: how can a critical understanding of the evolution of Europe’s LGBTQ+ archives be used by scholars, queer and trans community members, and cultural heritage workers to forge sustainable tactics for protecting LGBTQ+ history? ‘Perverse Collections’ aims to transform practices of collecting and protecting queer and trans materials in ways which will have widespread implications for the cultural heritage sector as a whole.

Contributor bios:

Elahe Haschemi Yekani is Professor of English and American Literature and Culture with a focus on postcolonial studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She is the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project ‘Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary: Aesthetics, Affects, Archives’, in which she investigates queer narratives of migration with a comparative focus on Germany, Britain and the US. Together with Professor Silvy Chakkalakal, Haschemi Yekani is the PI of the Princeton-Humboldt Strategic Partnership Grant project ‘Re-Imagining the Archive: Sexual Politics and Postcolonial Entanglements’. Her research interests include diasporic writing, postcolonial studies, visual culture, cultural memory and the archival turn, queer theory and intersectionality.

Tone Hellesund is the initiator and founder of the Norwegian queer archive, Skeivt arkiv, which opened in 2015. She works as a professor of European ethnology/cultural history at the University of Bergen, Norway. She cooperates closely with the Norwegian queer archive in regard to both teaching and research. Hellesund is part of the Nordic project NordiQueer – A Nordic Queer Revolution?, and leads the project QUEERDOM, a project that explores queer domesticities and intimacies in Norway between 1842 and 1972. She is also the leader of the first large research project about the Norwegian LGBT movement, which will start in 2024.

Wigbertson Julian Isenia (he/they) is an interdisciplinary scholar and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. They co-founded Black Queer Archives, which organizes panels and exhibitions on marginalized groups, such as queer activist groups of colour from the 1970s, and HIV and AIDS awareness among postcolonial migrants in the Netherlands. Their work focuses on gendered and sexual cultures in Curaçao (part of the Dutch Caribbean) by analyzing cultural practices such as archival collections, literature, theatre, and cultural performances, combining ethnography with archival work. They are particularly interested in the implications of postcolonialism and queer politics for historical and contemporary debates.