Completing the Past: LGBT+ History and Creative Production
Completing the Past: LGBT+ History and Creative Production
Presenters’ Biographies
Dinos Aristidou is a playwright, director and consultant working in the UK and internationally. He is currently artistic director of 'Hear Us Out', a celebrating age project, staging real life stories of LGBTQ+ older people. He was writer-in-residence at Mayflower Theatre, Southampton, and recently worked with young people at the Atlanta Center of Civil and Human Rights in the USA on performing activism. Contact: dinos@newwritingsouth.com.
Moira Armstrong is a final-year undergraduate at Kent State University majoring in English and US History with a minor in LGBTQ Studies. They are also the lead research assistant for the Queer Britain Queer Pandemic project. Moira has been accepted to pursue an MA with Goldsmiths’ Queer History program. Contact: marmst23@kent.edu.
James Brown writes: I'm a PhD candidate in Creative Arts & English at La Trobe University. My work focuses on queer historiography, particularly the historiography of Australian queer history. I'm active in the queer community at La Trobe, and am employed by the university's Student Wellbeing Services as a peer support worker for LGBTQIA+ students. Contact: jamesabrown.1994@gmail.com.
Don Duncan was born and raised in the Irish midlands. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Columbia University in New York and the INSAS film school in Belgium, he spent 15 years working as a freelance journalist, mainly in the Middle East and Africa. He is now a lecturer in Broadcast Journalism at Queen's University Belfast. He has a practice and research interest in sound and memory. Contact: don.duncan@qub.ac.uk.
Kevin Gaffney is an artist filmmaker and PhD researcher at Ulster University. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2011 with an MA Photography and Moving Image. Recent solo exhibitions include: Outburst Queer Arts Festival (Belfast, 2019); CAI02 (Sapporo, 2018); and Block 336 (London, 2017). His work is part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s and Arts Council of Ireland’s collections. Contacts: Kevingaffney1@gmail.com or www.kevin-gaffney.com.
Elizabeth Kirwan writes: I work at The National Library of Ireland, managing both the NLI's National Photographic Archive, and also the NLI's Conservation Department. I have been a voluntary Committee member of the Irish Queer Archive working group since 1999, and was instrumental in the Donation of the IQA to the NLI in 2008. Contact: emkirwan@nli.ie.
Yuen Fong Ling, an artist and researcher based in Sheffield, writes: I am also a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, Early Career Research Fellow, and established The Human Memorial Research Collective. Currently, I’m developing an exhibition of new artwork for the LGBT+ activist community in Bury, for Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre to open October 2021 . Contact: www.yuenfongling.com.
Carleen Maur is a media artist and Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her experimental video essays have screened at festivals including Marseilles Underground Film Festival and Onion City Film Festival. Her work examines the intersections between sex, gender, camouflage and surveillance. Contact: maur.carleen@gmail.com.
Veronica McKenzie is the Manager of ReelBrit Productions and served as Community Engagement lead for the Haringey Vanguard project. Her research into BAME LGBTQ+ History led to Under Your Nose, a documentary which charted the history of the first Black Lesbian and Gay centre in Europe. Her other works include Finding Home about LGBTQ+ Asylum Seekers and Nine Nights about the Caribbean mourning ritual. Contact: Veronica@reelbritproductions.com.
JulieMc (McNamara) is a theatre director, playwright and actor. She is an award winning writer and director (South Bank Show ITV, Arts Council England, DaDa Festival, Picture This film festival) an Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne, and recipient of the Miegunyah Fellowship 2019. Contact: intouch@juliemc.com.
Molly Merryman, Ph.D. is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at Kent State University in the United States. She is the research director for Queer Britain, the UK’s national LGBT+ History Museum, where she leads the museum’s Virtually Queer project. Contact: mmerryma@kent.edu.
Richard O'Leary is a storyteller and Visiting Research Fellow in History at Queen's University, Belfast. He was the Coordinator of the Northern Ireland LGBT Heritage Project until May 2021 when he left to focus on his archive based live performance storytelling. His latest solo show is due to open at the MAC theatre, Belfast in November 2021 and is provisionally titled ‘My Queer History of Northern Ireland’. In 2019 he was artist in residence at the Outburst Queer Arts festival. Contact: r.oleary@qub.ac.uk.
Jules Pidduck is Associate Professor of Communication at the Université de Montréal. A specialist in feminist and queer media and theory, she has published widely in academic and community-based journals including GLQ, No More Potlucks and Camera Obscura. Also a member of the Queer Media Database Canada/Quebec project, Jules curated the 2019 installation ‘After Hours Chez Madame Arthur’. Contact: julianne.pidduck@umontreal.ca.
Alejandro Postigo is Senior Lecturer of Musical Theatre at London College of Music, and holds a PhD from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with a thesis in ‘Intercultural Adaptation of Copla’. He is leader of HisPanic Breakdown, a young theatre collective exploring issues of cultural and sexual identity through collaborations between English and Spanish artists. Contact: alejandro.postigo@uwl.ac.uk.
Peter Scott-Presland has been active in LGBT theatre since 1972. He formed the queer community theatre companies One in Ten [1976, Birmingham], Consenting Adults in Public [1979, London] and Homo Promos [1988, London]. He has written over 20 gay plays, including 4 musicals, an opera cycle, an anti-Requiem and over 100 cabaret songs. He co-ordinated the London Pride Cabaret Stage 1985-98. Contact: homopromos@gmail.com.
Billie-Gina Thomason is a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Liverpool. Her recently completed thesis explores the lives of twenty-five working-class female to male gender passing individuals in the nineteenth century and considers how they performed a gender contrary to their biological identity. Themes in her thesis range from bodily manipulation, marriages, community engagement and death. Contact: Billieginathomason@gmail.com.
Hannah Tiernan writes: I am a Dublin based researcher, writer and visual artist. I graduated with an MFA in art theory from NCAD in 2019. In June 2019 I hosted the 'Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck' Symposium at Project Arts Centre. As well as exhibiting extensively, I won the 2016 Inspirational Arts Award for my photographic project, EQUAL. Contacts: han.tiernan@gmail.com or www.hannahtiernan.com.
Assistant Professor Lauren Vachon teaches LGBTQ Studies at Kent State University. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the NEOMFA, a consortial creative writing program in Northeast Ohio. Contact: lvachon@kent.edu.
N.B. - all presenters listed have given permission for their contact information to be shared. If you think there has been a mistake please contact outingthepast.conference@gmail.com