Conference Agenda

The present study focuses on perspectives on activism and activist identity within queer/LGBTQI* individuals and examines the ways in which political engagement is approached within this population. Queer individuals are all directly or indirectly confronted with politicisation and discrimination, but may show highly varied experiences of identity, social positioning, access to resources, and political opinion.

As part of this study design and to represent this complex tension field, this project employs a custom sentence completion method derived from Katrin Kullasepps double direction theme completion (DDTC) method to explore individuals inner conflicts, role negotiations and overall meaning construction surrounding activism and queer community.

Through the analysis of a first set of qualitative data gathered using this method, we can explore how participants construct “activist” and “queer” identity categories, define role attributes and state expectations associated with these labels. This initial deep dive into the dialogicality of these central identity categories forms the base for any future analysis of the data and enables the creation of an initial map of the “queer activism” field as constructed by members of the community.

Eventually, this understanding may not only be built on to better understand activism and political engagement within complex social and identity networks, but also may provide a base for future initiatives to offer tailored practical support fostering agency and access to political work for members of politicised communities.