Queer Beyond London is delighted to highlight exciting research and projects exploring queer local histories that will be featured in our upcoming Queer Localities international conference from 30 November – 1 December 2017.

 

Beth Asbury

In April 2016, a team from the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, was awarded funding by the Arts Council England via the Oxford University Museums Partnership’s Innovation Fund for the creation of the University’s first cross-collections trail, Out in Oxford: An LGBTQ+ Trail of the University of Oxford’s Collections. The project was a response to a lecture by Professor Richard Parkinson of the Oriental Institute (previously of the British Museum and author of A Little Gay History), which he gave during LGBT History Month that year. The lecture called for more explicit, not implicit, LGBTQ+ representation in museums and can be watched here: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/great-unrecorded-history-lgbt-heritage-and-world-cultures.

asbury

The outcome of the project is a free booklet featuring items from each of the University’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums group (GLAM): the Ashmolean Museum, Bodleian Libraries, Botanic Garden, Museum of the History of Science, Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museum, and the Bate Collection in the Faculty of Music. The items featured have been identified by the collections’ staff, but the interpretations have all been written by volunteers who identify as LGBTQ+ or allies. Forewords were kindly provided by Richard Parkinson and Stephen Fry. The trail was launched with a series of spectacular and well-attended events co-curated by the project’s volunteers during LGBT History Month this year. The project was shortlisted for a Museums + Heritage Award and can be accessed here: www.glam.ox.ac.uk/outinoxford.

Beth Asbury works for the Pitt Rivers Museum, an anthropology and world archaeology museum at the University of Oxford. She was the project manager of Out in Oxford and tweets from @Pitt_Rivers #OutInOxford #QueerPitt 

 


Queer Localities: a two-day international conference
Birkbeck, University of London
30 November – 1 December 2017

Free and open to all, but please REGISTER your place here

Click here to view the Conference Programme.

Out in Oxford: An LGBTQ+ Trail of the University of Oxford’s Collections

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