Queering the Archive, Student-led symposium

This one-day symposium will explore ‘queer’ archival practice. The focus of Queering the Archive encompasses archival work focused on LGBTQ+ subjects, culture, and history, as well as archival practice with an epistemologically queer potential. This symposium comprises a series of panels addressing archives and queerness within the following frameworks: lived experience, oral histories, ephemerality and affect, materiality, and theoretical approaches. The day will begin with a keynote talk (speaker TBC) and conclude with a zine-making workshop with Techne PGR Eve Archer, whose research centres around ‘small art’ forms and LGBTQ+ histories. While relevant to students whose work concerns archival practice and/or queerness, Queering the Archive also welcomes anyone wanting to explore ‘queering’ as a research method. What does it mean to ‘queer’ something? How might queerness inform our understanding of feeling? What does it mean to interpret something, such as a material object, queerly? This symposium will bring to light imaginative and intersectional research approaches. These methods make evident the potential of queer archival practice to fracture and reinvent past understandings of standardized, documented history.

The symposium will take place in accessible rooms at Senate House, London, with lunch and tea/coffee provided.

This is a hybrid event with the option to attend online. Book in-person or remote attendance on Inkpath.