CoSS PhD Scholarship - Latin America’s Queer Movements Between Transnationalism and Decoloniality

The School of Social and Political Sciences offers a dynamic research environment with a strong international profile and over 100 academic and research staff. The School combines five subject groups including Sociology, in which the PhD project will be based with a first supervisor, and Politics where the second supervisor is located. In the REF 2014 assessment of research in the UK, over 80% of the School’s research performance was assessed in the top two categories of 4* ‘world-leading’ or 3* ‘internationally excellent’.

Project details
The aim of this PhD research is to examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) activism in Latin America develops through transnational processes, in relation to decolonizing analyses. The project will engage decolonial thinking to investigate the relationship between South-North collaborations and decolonizing in terms of power relations, identities and dialogue. Focusing on two different country case studies, the study will also involve data-collection from actors in the Global North that are involved in related transnational processes. In a context where LGBTQ rights are mobilised positively or negatively in wider nationalist and internationalist projects, especially challenged in new right-wing populist national formations, it is vital to generate new analysis specifically of transnational processes. While research increases on Global North actors, there is a need for more detailed empirical research on activist agency originating in the South that engages with transnational processes, and to make the original step of exploring this in light of decolonial analyses.