LGBT+ Volunteering in English Higher Education: Care and Community

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT+) volunteering communities in English Higher Education have grappled with massive cultural and legislative changes over the past decade: on one hand, the relatively secure legal standing of LGBT+ communities in England has meant that these communities are now more visible in the university landscape than ever. On the other hand, the continued marketisation of Higher Education has put limits on how these communities can function within their institutions. Although much research has been conducted on the experiences of LGBT+ people in universities, this has tended to be phrased solely in demographic terms. However, there has been very little research on how LGBT+ university communities operate as communities.

In order to investigate how university-based LGBT+ communities make sense of their ambivalent positioning within and/or against academic institutional context, I conducted interviews and focus group sessions with nineteen LGBT+ volunteers at English universities, and conducted a Thematic Analysis on the resulting transcripts. I combined this with a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of university-published promotional material, as well as integrating reflexive discussions of my own experiences as a volunteer within university-based LGBT+ communities. Building on critiques of linear time, normative kinship, and neoliberal notions of success and failure, I examine why people join LGBT+ volunteering communities, what these communities ‘do’ within the university landscape, how they are presented by the university, and ultimately the value that these communities bring to the university. My analysis contributes to LGBT+ educational scholarship by considering not just how educational spaces can include LGBT+ people more effectively, but also how educational spaces can be guided and transformed by the value systems created within LGBT+ volunteering communities. I argue that my participants’ experiences of facilitating informal care, alternative kinship structures and celebrating ‘small’ or imperfect successes, often runs counter to the institutional values of the university, and as such can prompt a rethinking of how Higher Education is structured altogether.

Date of Award	1 Oct 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Billy Holzberg (Supervisor) & Anwar Tlili (Supervisor)