About

This research project traces a lineage of canal boat-dwelling, from pioneering lesbian boaters of the late 20th century to the contemporary and imagined future experiences of queers, dykes, non-binary and trans people who in increasing numbers call the waterways their home.

The PhD contributes to understandings of alternative methods of forging a home and a life as these are presented in queer, geographic and historical literature, and it elucidates concepts of radical domesticity and queer worldbuilding. Themes of liminality, mobility, freedom, agency and resistance are foregrounded. The thesis also explores ongoing socio-economic challenges of these floating home spaces and addresses social inclusion, marginality and the precarity of living spaces. 

Primary research methods include oral histories, mobile (or ‘floating’) interviews and participatory ethnography. The project will also create its own mobile archive, providing historical and contemporary connections between disparate LGBTQ+ individuals and groups on the canal network. This, along with the oral histories, will be deposited in the Bishopsgate Institute, London, thereby making a contribution to queer historiography and the history of housing.