Displaced From, Displaced Within: Queer and Trans Lives Across East Africa
September 10th, 12-1.30pm BST. Online
Over the past -decade, East Africa has become shorthand for state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia: draconian legislation, recurring moral panics, and crackdowns that have pushed growing numbers of LGBTQI+ people to leave their homes. But the region cannot be reduced to a place people flee. Its countries are also host states and transit points, producing and receiving displaced people at once, and displacement often happens within borders as much as across them.
Since the project that became East African Queer and Trans Displacements (Bloomsbury, 2026) began, the ground has shifted again: aid architectures have contracted, asylum systems have hardened, and sexual and gender rights are questioned in some contexts. This panel asks participants (editors and authors) to look forward: where do they now situate their findings, in current conditions and in relation to one another? What still holds, and what needs rethinking? And what becomes visible when we look from East Africa rather than at it?
Each speaker will share short reflections and we will then follow with an open discussion on the intellectual, political and personal stakes of this work.
Speakers
- John Marnell, University of the Witwatersrand
- B Camminga, University of Bristol
- Stella Nyanzi, Ruhr Universität Bochum
- Mwangi Mwaura, University of Oxford
- Gabriel du Plessix, University of Warwick
The book is available open access on Bloomsbury Collections. All welcome - attendance is free but please register to receive a Zoom link one hour before the event. To register, see https://GenSeM_Queer_EastAfrica.eventbrite.co.uk
We are very much looking forward to seeing you there.
Regards
GenSeM
