Making LGBTQ communities, changing LGBTQ spaces

Hosted by Dr Nick McGlynn

Over the past 20 years or so, geographers have increasingly engaged with issues of sexualities, and LGBTQ lives and issues. For decades geographic research concentrated on urban-dwelling gay men, particularly regarding the production of ‘gay villages’ or ‘gay ghettos’. In more recent years geographers have also recognised and explored the lives of LGBTQ people in more rural areas. This talk unites both the rural and the urban, and explores how LGBTQ communities shape and are shaped by place. Taking as a case study the areas within and surrounding Brighton (the so-called ‘Gay Capital’ of the UK), we will see that these communities shape the physical environments of places, their politics, their economies and more – and that they continue to do so. The talk also investigates how changes to LGBTQ spaces and places relate to interlinked social inequalities and exclusions.

Dr Nick McGlynn is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Brighton. His research investigates the spaces and scenes of LGBTQ communities, and particularly the GBQ men’s ‘Bear’ subculture. He teaches modules on contemporary socio-spatial issues, ethnographic fieldwork, and the geographies of gender, sexualities and bodies.

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