Reports on the Sexualities in/of the Global South workshop

SSQWG and the Developing Areas Research Group (DARG) were able to provide travel bursaries for four scholars who attended the Sexualities in/of the Global South workshop in August. These travel bursaries were partly funded by Research Group Grants awarded to SSQWG and DARG by the Royal Geographical Society, and were further subsidised by SSQWG funds. They enabled two postgraduate students to travel to the conference and provided more substantial assistance to scholars based in Malawi and India. The event was enriched by their attendance.

Here two of the travel bursary recipients report on the conference. First, Sarah Keenan a PhD student at the University of Kent:

"The Sexualities in/of Global South workshop in Manchester brought together a number of scholars from varied fields including geography, law, sociology and women's studies. The papers presented were varied in terms of home institutions, early and later career scholars, and in terms of focus. There were a number of papers focussing on particular regions, such as Brazil, India and Nepal as well as an interesting paper by Dr Kate Bedford on heterosexuality and international institutions. I came away from the workshop with a renewed sense of the importance of an intersectional understanding of issues of race and sexuality."

Elsbeth Robson, a research fellow at the Universities of Malawi and Brunel University, shares these thoughts:

"This was a very interesting and stimulating workshop which represented the first cooperation between DARG (one of the most well established and active research groups of the RGS-IBG) and SSQWG which is probably the newest research grouping. It was encouraging to see a spread of participants from both groups and there was plenty of fruitful discussion. The presentations ranged from research proposals (some funded and about to commence, others still in formulation) to well polished research output. Topics covered sexual trafficking past and present, development discourses of feminism and heteronormativity, sexual diversity, queer performances, identity and politics. The organisers are to be commended and hopefully this is just the start of further collaboration and exploration of sexualities in/of the Global South by geographers."

We share Elsbeth's hope that this event will be the first of many collaborations between SSQWG and DARG. We thank everyone who attended the event and made it such a positive and stimulating exchange of ideas.