Natalie Abbott (UCL) - 2024-25 Students
natalie.abbott.24@ucl.ac.uk

Empowering LGBTQ+ Youth Through Digital Archiving: A Critical Pedagogical Approach

This research will seek to explore ways that young LGBTQ+ people might utilise their voices to (co-)create narratives of their own experiences, thus reclaiming their role as speaker, and ultimately as archivist. Emphasis will be placed on the technological tools and platforms required to do this, as creative and innovative methods may provide alternative – positive – solutions to these pervasive concerns. This research will explore current trends in queer archival practice to assess what necessary lessons might be learned for the preservation of experiences of LGBTQ+ youth that can then be translated into educational contexts.

In Britian, there is increasing animosity toward the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues. This animosity is felt keenly in education, where a narrative of care and protection of innocence is driving a chilling move towards near censorship of discussions of gender and sexuality. This narrative of care, however, fails to include care for LGBTQ+ youth. Young LGBTQ+ people experience a form of epistemic injustice as a result of being increasingly unable to advocate for, or even discuss, issues that affect themselves in the classroom. While this climate of animosity has been increasing, there has arguably been a stubborn undercurrent of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric since the repeal of Section 28, which was introduced as a means to stop local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality and was in place from 1988 – 2003.

This research will map current trends in queer archival practice to assess what necessary lessons might be learned for the preservation of experiences of LGBTQ+ youth. Queer archival practice is extremely varied and may range from the generation of interviews with people about their experiences of gender and sexuality to the collection of LGBTQ+ ephemera to the continuous co-creation of physical and digital resources. Some examples of queer archiving may be the records of Brighton and Hove LGBT Switchboard, the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, or the Queering the Map interactive project. This research will also assess the current educational climate through an Action Research Cycle with teachers and LGBTQ+ community educators. The output will be a resource for utilisation with young people that will inform critical pedagogies inside and outside of the classroom.

The aim of this research is to investigate how creative technological archival methods can be utilised in service of critical pedagogies in order to make positive change in the lives of LGBTQ+ youth by enabling them to be the archivists of their own experiences and histories.

To do this, I will seek to answer the following research questions:

1. What insights can be gained from analysing queer archival practices, and how might these insights be effectively applied for pedagogical purposes? How might the current educational climate impact this application?
2. In what ways can creative technological methods suggest new solutions to ongoing concerns, in relation to LGBTQ+ youth?
3. How might we bridge the learning gap between queer work taking place in archives and the desire for critical pedagogies in educational contexts?

The outcomes of this research have the potential to impact archival and pedagogical practice, while contributing to larger conversations within the academy. As well as contributing to the field, this work will generate educational resources that will have the potential to positively change education. My hope is that the creation of these resources – the methodology and the methods of the doing – will also have an impact on the potential for the generation of educational resources in the future, by others as well as by myself.

Primary supervisor: Professor Rebecca Jennings