Queer Domesticities: homosexualities and home lives in twentieth-century London

The book which will be completed during the fellowship takes queer history indoors to explore the shifting relationship between homosexuality, home and family from the late nineteenth to the early twenty first century. It questions the exclusion of queer men from the narratives of home, domesticity and family which have been so central to British social and cultural history, and extends histories of male homosexual subjectivity, identity and community which have tended to focus on public or semi-public spaces. The book (contracted to Palgrave Macmillan for July 2012) historicises and contextualises recent legal, social and cultural change (and in particular civil partnership and adoption legislation) and draws out shifting ideas and everyday experiences of home over the long century since the sexological and psychoanalytic descriptions of the invert and homosexual. It does not simply look at these 'types' of men in an additional set of spaces, however. Instead it explores the ways in which homosexual subjectivities may have been configured differently within the domestic sphere and considers the impact various domestic arrangements had on political, creative, sexual and social lives. It asks how these arrangements resonated with broader ideals and lived experiences of home and family; considers the significance of class, migration, race, political consciousness, locality, biological kin and friendship networks to the way households functioned; looks at connections with wider queer cultures and 'homes from home' (pubs and hotels, for example); and explores the (often curtailed) options available to queer men in relation to rental and housing markets, social housing, and squats and communes.

The book will be anchored in eight case study households taken from across the period. These will allow for a detailed and contextually grounded exploration of relationships between shifting ideologies of gender, sexuality and domesticity and individual domestic imperatives and choices. The approach facilitates a research conversation with other recent case study rich histories of home and intimacy (Cohen, 2006; Marcus, 2007) and with those queer histories of London which have looked more to the public realm (Cocks, 2003; Cook, 2003; Houlbrook, 2005). The case studies have been selected to illuminate different circulating perceptions of queer home life in relation to lived experience, and especially regarding domestic aesthetics, family, bedsitterland, suburban living, communes and squats, domestic contingencies associated with HIV and AIDS, and the implications of new legislation. They also facilitate consideration of how queer homes have been recorded and represented - privately via photographs, home movies, and diaries, and more publicly in fiction, theatre, autobiography and film. Different sources come into particular focus in relation to different case studies: scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and photographs are to the fore with the earlier households; oral history testimonies (including 25 gathered as part of this research), home movies and actual homes under scrutiny for the later ones. Such different source materials, the book will show, give different kinds of access to intimate lives and histories. Techniques and analytical perspectives from cultural and social history, sociology, cultural geography, and literary and film studies especially are deployed to weave the book's narrative and argument and to explore tensions, disjunctions and intersections between histories of discourse and histories of everyday lives; between indoor domestic spaces and other realms.

The project is benefiting a network of queer, lesbian and gay, and gender scholars, Birkbeck and the Raphael Samuel History Centre, and the broader academic community, as outlined above. It will continue to do so during and after the period of a fellowship. In addition, and as one of the core objectives, the research project is having and will continue to have an impact on local lesbian and gay community groups, on a broader public, and on archive professionals. The aim is to bridge the gap between popular and academic history-making relating to lesbian and gay identities, and to show the wider relevance of the histories that are being explored. To this end I am writing the book to appeal to a wide readership; giving public talks and convening open archive workshops and a History and Policy debate; engaging gay men in the research process through oral history work; depositing 25 oral history interviews at the London School of Economics Library for wider consultation; and taking part in media and documentary film work relating to project themes. These various activities will give multiple points of access to the research, provide networking opportunities to event participants, and allow for detailed discussion of project findings - including amongst archivists and policy makers.

The 'Pathways to Impact' statement details the talks I have given to date to Age Concern gay groups and the Lesbian and Gay Humanist Association, as part of LGBT history month, and at the London Metropolitan and National Archives. I am in addition using the Raphael Samuel History Centre and the History and Heritage Adult Learning network (which I convene as part of my work for the Centre) as platforms for further outreach work. As part of the Centre's open archive workshop series I will convene three workshops on project themes during the period of the fellowship at the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (Bishopsgate Institute), the Hall Carpenter Archive (London School of Economics Library), and the Rukus! Black LGBT collection at the London Metropolitan Archive. Similar workshops conducted to date have attracted a diverse audience, including LGBT youth groups and archivists working with related collections. During the fellowship period I will also convene a debate as part of the Raphael Samuel Centre's History and Policy series, bringing together historians, policy makers and activists to discuss the historical and immediate contexts of recent legal change relating to adoption, civil partnership and inheritance and property rights for gay men. Previous debates in the series - 'Bad Kids' and Madness in the System' - have attracted broad audiences of between 100 - 200 people. These various events, in addition to my media work (see 'Pathways to Impact'), are helping to deepen understanding of the multiple dimensions of queer home and family lives, and are flagging available resources and methodologies for tracking community and individual histories. The book finalised during the fellowship period will consolidate and further extend this impact.

I have in addition sat on advisory and steering groups at the London Assembly, Museum of London, Stonewall Housing (for a HLF oral history project) and the London Metropolitan Archive (LMA). I had a direct impact on the shape and conduct of the oral history project, and the LMAs conference for 2008 centred on lesbian and gay families as a result of my input. I have a longstanding and ongoing commitment to this work beyond the academy and in forums where my research may have impact on archival and broader equality and diversity policy.