Meet the team…
Dr Jeff Evans, Research Fellow, John Moores University, Liverpool & Joint-Coordinator OTP
Jeff has been an active campaigner for LGBT+ and human rights for the past 40 years. He entered the building industry at 16 as an apprentice joiner and went onto election as UCATT shop steward and Branch Secretary. His novel ‘Gay Joiner’ was featured in the magazine ‘Scene Out’ in the late 80s, where he also volunteered as ‘Literary Editor’. Jeff’s work also included promoting queer rights in Ireland during the ‘Troubles’. Jeff took a part-time undergraduate degree in politics and contemporary history (being temporarily expelled for promoting HIV Health Information!), followed by a European Studies Postgraduate Research Centre scholarship.
He then went into teaching courses, meeting Dan his husband. Together their decades-long practice has been serially showcased by local and national media including pioneering The Classroom history lessons. He founded and coordinated The Prevalence of Homophobia Survey (2013), the largest survey of classroom teachers to date. These NUT campaigns fed a long and vicious homophobic campaign by his employers and led to Jeff leaving state teaching. He returned to higher education and since then he has continued to study LGBT+ history, (e.g. here) based at Liverpool John Moores University where he is a Research Fellow. He founded Outing the Past in 2015 and remains one of its driving forces travelling extensively. He has just completed Project Management of the first retrospective touring exhibition of LGBT+ Activism in Northern Ireland “Queering the North” with the Museum of Free Derry.” He is currently working with the University of Manchester presenting a unit to History Teacher Trainees on How to Teach LGBT+ History
Sue Sanders, Professor Emeritus, Harvey Milk Institute
Sue Sanders is Emeritus Professor Harvey Milk Institute, an “out and proud” lesbian, and LGBT rights activist for over 50 years. She became chair of Schools OUT UK in 2000. She was a founder member of the LGBT Advisory Group to the Metropolitan Police and worked closely with the criminal justice system, after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. In 2004 she instituted the UK's first LGBT History Month an annual event which happens every February in the UK. In 2007 she was responsible for the website The Classroom which has over 80 lesson plans that ‘usualise’ LGBT people in all their diversity for all ages across the curriculum. She co runs OUTing the Past an annual international festival of LGBT history. She is a member of the IAG on hate crime to the government. She often appears in the media and has written short stories and several chapters in books on LGBT issues and equality and Diversity.
In these troubling times since Brexit when we have seen hate crime rise, it is even more important to Educate OUT prejudice by making LGBT people in all their diversity visible and safe.
Emma Vickers, Senior Lecturer in History, Liverpool John Moores University, England
Emma Vickers is a senior lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University. Prior to this, she was a senior teaching fellow at Lancaster University and a lecturer in History at the University of Reading. Her first monograph, Queen and Country: Same Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939-1945 (MUP 2013) explores the intersection between same-sex desire and service in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. Emma has published articles in the Lesbian Studies Journal (2009) and Feminist Review (2010). Her most recent work (with Corinna Peniston-Bird) is Lessons of War (Palgrave, 2017) which takes up the invitation offered by the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to evaluate how gender history contributes, nuances and challenges existing understandings of the Second World War. She is also working on outputs arising from Dry Your Eyes Princess, a project which uses oral testimony to uncover the experiences of trans* personnel in the British Armed Forces before 2000. Following an award from the Arts Council, Emma worked with the photographer Stephen King on a series of photographs of her interviewees which were exhibited as part of Homotopia in Liverpool and Outburst in Belfast. Finally, she is also part of the AHRC network, Passions of War, a researcher on the European Union funded project 'Gender citizenship and sexual rights in Europe' and a member of the Oral History Society LGBTQ special interest group.
K G Valente, Professor of Mathematics and LGBTQ Studies, Colgate University, USA
Ken Valente holds a joint appointment as Professor of Mathematics and LGBTQ Studies at Colgate University. He has also held a number of key administrative posts, including Director of the Division of University (Interdisciplinary) Studies. His scholarship in the history of mathematics, science, and ideas has engaged both feminist and queer perspectives. Other work has been dedicated to documenting and disseminating the curricular history of LGBTQ Studies programs in higher education as well as examining the future development of these and related programs. He recently served as guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality entitled “25 Years On: The State and Continuing Development of LGBTQ Studies Programs.”
Dr. Stephen M. Hornby, Playwright, Researcher, Lecturer, University of Salford, England
Stephen dramatises archives. He is an award-winning playwright and film-maker. He lectures on playwriting, theatre history and drama and playwright in residence to LGBT+ History Month.
Among his many achievements, Stephen won the ‘WINGS’ award for his short film ‘Unchechen’ and for his work with LGBT+ History Month as their writer in residence since 2014, the inaugural Queer Lit Award for Best LGBTQ+ Production and completed a five-star sell-out regional tour of his Arts Council England (ACE) funded play “The Burnley Bugger’s Ball”.
Other recent ACE and Heritage Lottery Fund projects include:
‘The Day The World Came To Huddersfield”: a major year-long arts and archive project about the UK’s first national Pride.
‘The Adhesion of Love’: a Northern tour of a full-length stageplay about a group of men from Bolton who connected with queer poet Walt Whitman.
‘A Very Victorian Scandal’ (patron Russell T. Davies): a trilogy of one-act plays telling the story of the Hulme Drag Ball.
‘First Rumours’: a play about Peter Tatchell’s Labour candidacy in the 1983 General Election based on exclusive new interviews with Tatchell.
‘Desire, Love, Identity: Museum Monologues’ in-gallery performances in the Bolton Museum as part of a touring exhibition by the British Museum.
Head over to the OUTing The Past Theatre page to find out more about Stephen’s work.
Maisie Barker, Journalist and writer, Manchester, England
Maisie is a freelance writer based in Manchester and London. She completed her BA in English with Creative Writing at Goldsmiths and is now writing for online independent news platform The Common Sense Network. She has been part of Young Enigma - an LGBT writing and performance group - for a number of years, has written for VADA Magazine and has been published in Diva Magazine and Gay Times as part of her work for Schools Out UK and LGBT History Month.
Laila El-Metoui @lelmeducation
A UK based Equality Advocate . A Further Education teacher and teacher trainer, her curriculum background is in ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages). She advocates for a bias aware, trauma informed and compassionate curriculum.
She was instrumental in setting up the London branch of NATECLA and as well as Queering the ESOL Curriculum in the UK.
She is the founder of Educating OUT Racism and Pride in Education (quarterly global virtual conferences) and a member of DiversED.
She set up and chairs Proud London Councils, the Pan London Forum for LGBT + staff network in local authorities.
She has been leading on LGBT+ inclusion in the public sector for 25 years and won Stonewall Lesbian Role Model of the Year (2020). She was awarded the Pride 365 accolade in 2020.
Her published work includes Teaching and Education resources for Twilight People and Rainbow Pilgrims.
Jenny Ardrey, Software developer, Manchester, England
Jenny is a frontend developer based in Manchester and the North West. They completed their BA in History of Art at University of Manchester and are now working full time as a software developer and volunteering for OUTing The Past as Web Manager.