Senior Lecturer & Director of Postgraduate Research
@UofE_ArtHistory
, Artist and Curator | Contemporary art and LGBTQ+ visual culture | He/They🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
'Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Activism in Contemporary Britain' is AVAILABLE NOW with
@IntellectBooks
and
@UChicagoPress
. The collection has a range of contributions from academics, activists, artists and curators on LGBTQ+ material culture 🏳️🌈🪧🪡
Despite two top reviews, this
@ahrcpress
grant was rejected. One reviewer claimed it had no “relevance to LGB” and proved a “psychological risk” to children because it includes queer/trans people, and that there is “insufficient evidence” that LGBTQ+ people face hostility. 1/2
Just submitted a big grant. Like brilliant colleagues who were rejected, I probably won’t get it. This took 3 years of research and planning with 2 partners. Huge amounts of time, energy and input from countless people. The system is broken. At least there’s Prosecco. 🥂🌼
Absolutely over the moon to finally announce that I will be joining
@UniofExeter
as a Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture. So excited to work alongside some incredible scholars. Huge thank you to everyone who helped me get here.
Unsure how
@UKRI_News
can uphold their principle of research “by everyone, for everyone” when review college members undermine EDI policy and exclude diverse researchers from their “inclusive”system. We have been waiting for a response to our complaint since July.
@JaiGupte
2/2
Now over 30 Uni's looking at closures and implementing redundancy schemes, 10 added to this list in the past 24 hours alone. ⬇️Where is
@ucu
's national stance? Where is
@UKLabour
? Why is nobody talking about the fact that UK HE is literally crumbling around us? Wake up!
@qm_ucu
have created a live web page of all the closures and redundancies in UK Higher Education. There’s currently over 20 Uni’s and the list is growing by the day.
Today has been a good day! I have been awarded a Research Continuity Fellowship with
@PaulMellonCentr
to work on my first book 'Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Contemporary Activism in Britain' AND just signed the contract with
@IntellectBooks
! 🎉
My first monograph is under contract with
@BloomsburyBooks
! Queer Crafts will explore how LGBTQ+ contemporary practitioners have used a range of craft materials and processes to explore queer identities, communities and experiences.
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🪡🛠💍🪵🪑🏺🫗✂️
Today I successfully....ate some cake and had a nap. I keep telling myself not to feel guilty for these sorts of days and that trying to complete a PhD during a global pandemic with limited resources is, in fact, a most arduous and ridiculous task.
#PhdChat
#PhdLife
Gilbert Baker created the first Pride flag in 1978. It took 30 people to hand dye and sew in the attic of the Gay Community Center in San Francisco. Pink was removed because it was more costly in mass production, and later turquoise so it could be flown in two halves.
#PrideMonth
Call for Papers from LGBTQ+ folk for my edited collection 'Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Contemporary Activism in Britain'. Please spread far and wide! Deadline 9th July:
I've been elected to The Journal of Dress History
@DressHistorians
as an Advisory Board Member! Would really love to hear from folks working with queer/trans dress histories and practice-based research. Please do get in touch if you're keen to publish with the open-access journal
Delighted to launch the new Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Digital Culture at Exeter today and deliver the first keynote about transness and crafted responses to digital culture. Proud supervisor moment seeing two of my PhD students, Sam and Hao, present too! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💖
Excited to finally announce CRAFTED WITH PRIDE - an online event I've organised with
@QueerBritish
to explore the role of craft, broadly speaking, within queer activism in Britain. 6th April. Info and free tickets via Eventbrite:
It’s finally here! The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sexuality, and Culture (yes, another Companion…), featuring my chapter on queer waste, abjection, and artistic practice.
It’s September which means month SIX of no proper access to my studio or facilities, for a PhD by practice. No sign of an extension or more funding. Mental health also worse than ever, but it’s ok because we have ‘online tools to support a journey to positive wellbeing’
🙃🤡✌🏼
We have a cover! Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Activism in Contemporary Britain will be published this summer with
@IntellectBooks
and distributed worldwide with
@UChicagoPress
. If you are interested in hosting a launch event, do get in touch.
Gut wrenching rejection email for a job I’ve worked so incredibly hard for. Guess I should get used to this. Going to wear black, snuggle the dog and toast to everything I’ve achieved this year despite the circumstances. Cheers!
It’s official! Will be p/t Senior Research Assistant at Manchester School of Art (which makes a great abbreviation). Really excited to be working with
@kaisyngtan
and the Art & Performance team
@ManMetUni
to support a number of creative research projects and EDI initiatives.
Overjoyed to be invited to join the Royal School of Needlework as Visiting Lecturer. Today I'm preparing for a lecture about my art and research on queer craft. I'm just sad that I'll be beaming in from my dining room and not the Hampton Court site like a real queen deserves.
We’re delighted to welcome Dr
@Daniel_Fountain
as our newest lecturer in Art History & Visual Culture. Daniel brings with them an exciting background in art history, art practice and creative research, and a deep commitment to activism and social justice. Welcome Daniel!
If you’re in the process of updating course lists and teaching materials, here’s a gentle reminder of the Resource Portal on Anti-Racism and Decolonial Approaches to Art History and Visual Culture, available via
@forarthistory
website
My granddad passed away yesterday after a long battle with dementia. My Nan was distraught at the thought of leaving him. A nurse placed a knitted heart in his hand, and gave my Nan the other so she can carry it with her. A simple, selfless act that will stay with me forever.
Tonight I held the hand of God (Florence Welch). I lifted her onto the holy pedestal as she sang into my face and preached about the resurrection of dance. My heart and soul are full. 💖
Passed probation and have officially been made a permanent Lecturer (or at least as permanent as any job in academia and the humanities can be these days) 🥳🥂
Oh my god my book, of course. Yeah. Well, I don’t wanna give too much of it away because I’m very super-stitch-us - superstitious - so I don’t like to speak of things before they’re finished. Um, but it’s so far a masterpiece if I do say so myself.
@qm_ucu
have created a live web page of all the closures and redundancies in UK Higher Education. There’s currently over 20 Uni’s and the list is growing by the day.
Flights to Japan booked! Excited to begin a new research project to document global AIDS Quilt initiatives and map transnational histories of HIV/AIDS. Honoured to be invited to speak with the originator of Memorial Quilt Japan, esteemed textile artist Hiroshi Saito too. 🇯🇵🪡🔺
Page proofs are here! 'Crafted with Pride: Queer Craft and Activism in Contemporary Britain' will be available in all good bookshops in June (I hope!). Published with
@IntellectBooks
and distributed worldwide with
@yalepress
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🧵🪡🧶✂️📰
My first PhD student started today with me as Director of Studies. It feels a bit emosh and like a real full circle moment. So excited to be able to have conversations around all things practice-research, queer ecologies and trans textiles 🏳️⚧️🪡🧵✂️🧑🎓
I am SO excited to finally share this event I’ve organised with
@WattsGallery
on Contemporary Craft: Crafting Identities and Communities. Join us on 8th March where I'll be in conversation with Raisa Kabir, Rose Schmits, and Bisila Noha. Tickets and info:
Super exciting news! I have collaborated with
@CraftsCouncilUK
to develop a series of in person workshops for LGBTQIA+ families (broadly defined) in June. Do spread the word or pop along! 🧵✂️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
After five stressful months of delays and having to live apart, Evie and I are finally reunited and on our way to Exeter to move into our new home! 🏡🐕🦺🐾🔑
My latest journal article 'Survival of the Knittest: Craft and Queer-Feminist Worldmaking' is now available open access with
@MAIfeminism
. It's a complete patchwork of all things queer craft including trans textiles, van dykes and BDSM.🪡🧶🪧🚛🌐🧵🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Highly recommend watching the recording of this discussion, 'Holding Space: Bridging Fiber Art and Racial Identity', organised by
@Surface_Design
. Featuring the breathtaking and important work of Fabiola Jean-Louis, Suchitra Mattai and Shenequa Brooks.
I have discovered a set of eighteenth-century filters on Instagram and I can’t stop. Might change career from deadwood artist to barrister just for the wigs.
I loved
#ItsASin
but I have one question - where are the lesbians? Women (inc. trans and BIPOC women) played a key role throughout the AIDS crisis by encouraging intersectional approaches to activism and often undertaking caring duties.
Got hold of some of my grandmothers scrapbooks from the early 50s when she was a young girl. Apparently a love of campy collage runs in the family. Royalism, I might add, does not.
Recently came across the Digital Transgender Archive - such a fantastic and important initiative. Particularly love these collages from gendertrash, a 90s Canadian zine that is described as 'by and for transsexual and transgendered persons'.
Uni’s: we need you to apply for external funding, it makes us financially sustainable!
Also Uni’s: we are struggling with research cost recovery!
AHRC: Please apply to our funding schemes!
Also AHRC: Success rate is now under 5% and we are rejecting outright!
🫠🫠🫠
Pleased to say that I will be delivering a paper at Tate (?!?!?) in March for the ‘Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1900-Now’ conference. I’ll be presenting on camp cut-ups and the defaced library books of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Here’s to 2020!
Was doing some fact-checking on LGBTQ rights in 1950s Britain but became obsessed with learning about Roberta Cowell. She was the first known person in Britain to undergo male-to-female confirmation surgery in 1951, was a fighter pilot in WW2 and an avid race car driver. Badass.
Loved hearing fellow queer crafter, Sarah-Joy Ford, talk about her ongoing PhD practice-research around quilting as methodology. Love the idea of a quilt as both ‘witness and weapon’
@DECRarthistory
@forarthistory
#GlobalNewVoices
After attempting internal discussion, I can now say that I am appalled by
@forarthistory
's lack of reflexivity around their recent Annual Public Lecture. Representation matters and I do not stand for a version of art history that is whitewashed, cisnormative and heteronormative.
Absolutely disgusting that many UKRI-funded postgraduate students are currently under attack by right-wing self-described ‘journalists’. Just another normal day in UK Higher Education.
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt has finally been digitised and is available to view via
@googlearts
, accompanied by oral histories. This is so important for the preservation of the quilt, including the histories, stories, and people woven into it.
#WorldAIDSDay
After years of precarity, stress, and several house moves, I am so relieved to have been offered a permanent role. I will continue to advocate for the rights of ECR’s and provide a support system through my work with
@DECRarthistory
. If I can help in any way, please shout.
I love spending a whole week researching your curriculum, pedagogies, research groups, staff lists, tailoring my CV, writing a bespoke cover letter, then manually filling in all my details, to not even be acknowledged with an email or offered feedback - SAID NOBODY EVER.
Prepping my Queer Fashion lecture and had to squeeze in these beauts from 2019. Billy Porter in Christian Siriano at the Oscars, paying homage to the legendary Hector Xtravaganza. Lena Waithe in Pyer Moss at the Met Gala reminding basics that 'Black Drag Queens Invented Camp'.
Although my institution did not meet the threshold, I will be observing the digital picket line and won't be tweeting work stuff for the next few days. Solidarity with all comrades far and wide!
#UCUStrike
PSA for publishers and editors:
you have a duty of care when sending material for review.
I shouldn’t have to respond to feedback that claims my trans-inclusive content “misrepresents ideas of womanhood” and “should acknowledge ground-breaking work by second wave feminists” 🚩
My book
#CraftedWithPride
is a short and engaging collection that explores queer craft and the material cultures of LGBTQ+ activism in Britain since the 1980s. Over the next week, I'll give an overview of all the contributions via this thread 🧵👇
Myself, Dr Strohmayer
@tripsandflips_
and Dr Dyer
@Serena_Dyer
, have put together a CFP for a little zine project about experiences of returning to craft shops after the COVID-19 lockdown. Deadline 1st June 🧵🪡🎀😷
This time last year I was in NYC doing research on the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Seeing panels in person (each the size of an average human grave) and an endless list of names was just overwhelming. It is the largest community art project in the world.
#MuseumsUnlocked
One of the largest showcases of contemporary LGBTQIA+ artists in Britain is set to land in the North West at the Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery this summer. I’ll be exhibiting alongside the likes of Derek Jarman and Sunil Gupta 😱 Don’t miss it ⬇️
Thrilled to announce that
@matthewrgale
and I have been selected as
@uknewartists
Future Producers with our curatorial project, Queerly Made. We'll be able to commission new work by emerging LGBTQ+ artists and programme our 'First Outing' at
@abingdonstudios
, Blackpool! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏖️🗼
Well folks, there are now FOURTY Uni's implementing closures and redundancies on this list compiled by
@qm_ucu
comrades. We need a sector wide collective response NOW
@ucu
@DrJoGrady
. 🔥🗑️
@qm_ucu
have created a live web page of all the closures and redundancies in UK Higher Education. There’s currently over 20 Uni’s and the list is growing by the day.
Finally able to share the programme for our online symposium, Let's Talk 'Dirty'! The three day event will bring together a wide range of researchers, practice-researches and artists united in their study of ‘dirty’ matters. Info and free tickets here: