Queer status is significant, being strongly implicated in course content and pastoral care. It was implicit that staff and students gravitated to UAL as a perceived supportive queer environment, reflecting findings that ‘LGBT students…tended to find university a “safer space” than the rest of society’ (Formby, 2017, p. 205). This does not negate queer struggle. University and personal lives are inextricable, some tutors centring identity in the classroom.
University is a formative time in which students may attempt to reconcile and express queer identity away from home networks. This can be emancipatory, leading to ‘coming out’ (Valentine et al., 2009), but can be isolating. Queer staff respond empathetically, voluntarily enacting Formby’s (2017) call to address the individual, ‘course content’, ‘service provision’ and ‘a continuum of experiences’. This can represent the burden of ‘hope labour’, ‘EDI labour’, ‘emotional labour’ and ‘care labour’ (Slater, Simms and Formby, 2025).
Drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s (2012) understanding that diversity is ‘a hopeful performative’ and noting institutional ‘strategic inefficiency’ (Ahmed, 2021), Slater et al (2025) reflect Participant B’s scepticism about queer visibility and administration at UAL. They also highlight ‘the importance of community and workplace solidarity’ (Slater et al, 2025, p. 4), something no participant mentioned, but which the LGBTQ+ staff network fulfils.
I was originally curious about gay male experience in spaces and courses culturally associated with gay men, but in which they are minoritised (e.g. LCF). This wasn’t accomplished, but the broader spectrum of participants uncovered the specificity of needs, especially relating to queer gender. This would not have surfaced in a homogenous group and prompted reflection on my cisgendered privilege.
The small sample remains a limitation and the queer dominance in the practice-based cohorts discussed, does not reflect my experience. Queer status was already significant to respondents, obscuring other queer and ‘normative’ staff who need to teach ‘as an ally’ (Scott Winkler, 1996) and practice LGBTQ+ inclusivity to unconditionally support students (McGill and Joslin, 2021). I realised I had met one participant socially a decade ago, which I communicated ahead of their interview. This might have impacted on the participant’s responses.
I could not access contemporary queer students, but interviewing tutors allowed for their reflection over typically longer life-courses. This uncovered queer struggle shaped by diverse politico-cultural discourses. This was implicated in the significance of identity to professional practice, which was more evident than expected, possibly because I’m an HPL for academic courses.
Participants were alert to self-like queer students, while other queer identities remained undetected. This reminds me not to make presumptions, while acknowledging what ‘everyone already knows’ (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1993, p. 221), in order to avoid replicating the cultural silences that obscure queer lives.
My subjectivity shaped the interview schedule, my engagement with participants and my identifying and analysis of themes (Braun and Clarke, 2022, p. 5). Findings reflect my knowledge of queer histories, my sexual and gender identity, and my experience a student and tutor in UK HE. Participant B made me realise I had been centring queer sexuality at the expense of queer gender, a reflection that directs my future lecture development and engagement with students.
Participants felt marginalised in staff teams. Two disclosed feeling stressed. Participant testimony correlates with Sue et al’s (2007) subcategories of ‘mircroassaults’, ‘microinstults’ and ‘microinvalidations’. Queer staff and students likely experience ‘minority stress’, possibly compounded by intersectional marginality (Participant C), which has been linked to resilience, although this is contested (Cyrus, 2017). I could not interrogate intersectionality or language skills within the scope of the project, but this is apt for further investigation (e.g. see Duran, 2021).
Bibliography
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Ahmed, S. (2021) Complaint!. North Carolina: Duke University Press
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Cyrus, K. (2017) ‘Multiple minorities as multiply marginalized: Applying the minority stress theory to LGBTQ people of color’, Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health, 21(3) pp. 194-202
Duran, A. (2021) The experiences of queer students of colour at historically white institutions: navigating intersectional identities on campus. New York: Routledge
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