Join Onni Gust and Kit Heyam in conversation about their work on global trans histories, histories of empire, and their intersections. Kit and Onni will discuss their engagements with colonial and global trans histories in their past and current work, as well as new directions for the field, before inviting attendees to join the discussion.

Bios:

Onni Gust is Associate Professor in History at the University of Nottingham. They teach transgender history and histories or race, gender and sexuality in colonial context, mainly focusing on the ‘long’ eighteenth century. Their book, Unhomely Empire: whiteness and belonging, 1760-1830 was published in 2021. Their current research project, ‘Kin: trans history with and beyond the human’ looks at how we might think and write transgender history in the context of climate catastrophe.

Kit Heyam (they/he) is a writer, researcher, heritage practitioner and trans awareness trainer. They are the author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (Basic Books UK/Seal Press, 2022), a global history of gender nonconformity which was nominated for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction; and The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697: A Literary Transformation of History (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), the first book to uncover how King Edward II acquired his queer reputation. They are currently working to uncover hidden histories of gender in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, as well as teaching on the MSc in Sex, Gender and Sexualities at the University of Surrey.