Speaking Truth to Power: A History of Galop and the LGBTQ Community's Responses to Violence

Dominant discourses of contemporary British LGBTQ history present a narrative of increasing rights and equality. This public narrative of linear progression is largely due to a focus on top-down party political, policy, and legislative histories. However, a holistic view considering the social and cultural realities and lived experiences of LGBTQ people reveals a more complicated picture.

This project will elucidate this story via a history of Galop, the UK's anti-abuse LGBTQ charity. Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2022, Galop has played a crucial role in fighting violence against LGBTQ people and supporting LGBTQ survivors of violence. Despite its role in the landscape of British queer history, there has been little to no historiographical attention paid to Galop.

Collaborating with the Bishopsgate Institute, one of the leading queer history archives in the UK, this project will employ the prism of Galop's history to track the changing ways in which LGBTQ people have been subjected to forms of violence and how LGBTQ communities and organisations have responded.

Envisaged key research questions: How has the LGBTQ community's relationship with the national and local state evolved?

How have community engagement and activism shaped the development of public policy, attitudes, and legislation around violence perpetrated against LGBTQ people?

How has Galop and the wider LGBTQ community shaped and developed public narratives of interpersonal violence (including domestic abuse, sexual violence and hate crime), making visible LGBTQ experiences?

Galop was established in 1982 by a group of LGB lawyers who sought to protect the community from Police violence and ensure people understood their rights. Over the last four decades the organisation has developed to become one of the largest LGBTQ organisations in the UK and continues to grow, bringing to attention abuse and violence that is little understood by the wider population. This important history is not widely known, but is a vital part of the history of LGBTQ rights in Britain.

This public history project coincides with Galop's 40th anniversary, combining traditional archival research and new oral history interviews to create a digitised online archive and suite of public engagement outputs (such as blogs/vlogs, podcasts, commemorative public events at the Bishopsgate Institute, public-facing 'short history of' publication). The 40th anniversary ensures potential for significant public impact, raising Galop's profile.

In addition to conventional academic supervision via the supervisory team at RHUL, this studentship offers training and mentoring from the Bishopsgate Institute. The successful applicant will spend up to 9 months at the Bishopsgate, spread over the duration of the project. They will receive training on the use of existing archives; digitisation and web development; events management, and public-facing resource creation.

They will have desk space at the Bishopsgate and full access to existing archives. The student will become part of this diverse and innovative environment, working alongside archivists, education liaisons, community practitioners, outreach workers, researchers, and an existing community of CDA/CDP students. They will contribute to talks, blogs, and publications.

As an institution committed to public engagement and education, the student will further benefit from the networking opportunities placement affords, as well as hands-on experience of best practice in community engagement and public history.