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The Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence is a hub for research on sexuality and queer studies. We work with staff and students within the University of Sussex and we reach out externally to the local community in Brighton and Hove and an international network of artists, scholars and campaigners.

It’s been a busy year for Sex Diss – one of inward-looking reconsolidation and growth in our relatively new home of Media, Arts and Humanities. Many of our activities, accordingly, were focused on community building and planning – this included an “away afternoon” and follow-up meetings for planning our structure, the inauguration of “Hot Topics”, a hybrid online/in-person discussion group designed to keep abreast of current issues within academia and more broadly related to sex and gender politics, an inward-facing symposium on “Queer Connections”, which explored the potential for new collaborations between queer scholars, activists, and communities in Sussex and at Brighton, and, crucially, the formation of our new “Steering Committee”: Dr Sara Jane Bailes (Drama), Dr Natalia Cecire (English/Am Studs), Dr Charlie Jeffries (Media/Am Studs), Dr Sandra Nelson (Media/SHL/English), Dr Rachel O’Connell (English) and Dr Sam Solomon (English).

Alongside these inward-facing activities were a slew of research events, collaborations with external partners, creative practice workshops and projects.  Below is a selection of some of our events and projects from this past year:

• GORE, an online writing workshop for Queer Horror writing, run by Dr Tom-Bamford Blake and Gabriel Larenas Rosa of (PUC Chile), culminating in a zine publication and launch event
• “Planning Queer and Trans Narratives”; a workshop featuring Cat Fitzpatrick and Bishakh Som
• "Working Class Queers”; a research talk and panel from Yvette Cooper (Strathclyde), Jane Traies (Sussex alum) and Olu Jenzen (Brighton Uni)
• “Understanding South Asian Queerness through a Decolonial Lens”, research talk and discussion with Dhiren Borisa and Effie Makepeace

Finally, Sex Diss co-sponsored and was central to programming the third installation of the “Coast is Queer LGBTQ+ Literature Festival", a three-day event held that is a collaboration between New Writing South and Marlborough Productions w/ Sex Diss and Brighton University supporting, held at the ACCA. More information.

We are looking forward to the 2023 installation of the Festival, which will be held over 12-15 October 2023 and will feature more of our staff and students; Friday 13 October, in particular, will feature events that our MA and PhD students have curated. The full programme will be available in August, so look out for that, and please come and encourage your students to do so!  We look forward to continuing to embed student organising, programming, and learning into the festival.

Sam Solomon (Director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence)

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