LGBTQ+ Research Group

At ARU, Prof Catherine Lee and Dan Burman (co-leads of the University's LGBTQ+ staff network), introduced the UK’s first higher education LGBTQ+ leadership development programme. The programme is funded by ARU.

LGBTQ+ Leaders is open to staff at any level in both academic and professional services. It includes three leadership development days, and explores areas such as explores areas such as:

• routes into leadership and inspirational leaders
• communication and presentation skills
• leadership identity and practice 
• breaking down barriers and influencing cultural change
• building leadership networks.

Staff are allocated an LGBTQ+ mentor who works 1:1 with them during and between the leadership development days to help them achieve their goals.

The impact of the programme, was really positive for LGBTQ+ staff, is covered in a research paper that has been submitted for publication, and will be presented at a conference in 2024.

At the end of 2023, Prof Catherine Meads finished a large project about teaching sexual orientation and gender identity health concepts to health professionals. The project report is due to be published early in 2024.

Prof Meads has also prepared two other papers. The first is on the cost effectiveness of teaching health professionals about sexual orientation – using cervical smear issues as an example; the second is titled The Impact of Role Models on The Mental and Physical Health of Sexual and Gender Minorities.

Previously, Prof Meads conducted research into the experiences of LGBT+ women when accessing healthcare, highlighting the need for consistent education for healthcare professionals.

Patricia MacCormack, Professor of Continental Studies at ARU, has recently completed a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship on Death Activism as part of the Queer Death Studies network, the Bio Arts Lab and other arts-based research centres. This involved examining the way in which LGBTQIA+ people are vulnerable in necropolitics, and the intersectional relations between queer being, ecology and activism. Prof MacCormack presented lectures in Norkoping, Stockholm, Linkoping, Belgrade and is just about to submit a new book, Death Activism: Queer Death Studies and the Posthuman, to Bloomsbury.