School of Social and Political Science

Description

Abstract

The difference between ‘who you are’ and ‘how you tell’ is a key dynamic of the closet and the disclosure of information about your gender, sex and sexuality. The closet is also analogous to an information management system, which involves communicating data in different ways depending on the context.

Join Dr Kevin Guyan (Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Edinburgh) as he shares ideas from his new book Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), which explores what happens when LGBTQ communities encounter the classifications, categories and labels assigned to them. 

Guyan asks what can those working in Science and Technology Studies learn from Queer Studies – and vice versa? And how might key concepts from STS offer a language to help explain and respond to the mobilisation of anti-LGBTQ (in particular, anti-trans) politics and its focus on the design and control of categories.

Bio

Dr Kevin Guyan is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Business School and Director of the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab. He is the author of Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) and Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

Venue

Room G.01, High School Yards Teaching Centre
57 High School Yards
Edinburgh, EH1 1LZ

https://www.ed.ac.uk/maps/maps?building=0318

And online on Zoom https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82140544359