This project examines how asylum systems respond to people seeking protection on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC), while also recognising that these categories are lived through wider realities such as race, religion, class, nationality, language, disability and migration status. The project asks how asylum policies and practices can become more inclusive, evidence-based, and grounded in the lives of those most directly affected.
Through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship at the University of Leicester, the project uses a multi-country, cross-sectoral design to study LGBTIQ+ asylum across the UK, Spain, France, Mexico, Lebanon, and Kenya.
These sites are approached not as isolated case studies but as connected spaces shaped by migration routes, colonial histories, legal infrastructures, humanitarian systems and contemporary political debates.
The project aims to produce robust evidence, develop practical policy tools and support advocacy across local, national and international settings. It also includes creative dissemination, with documentaries, exhibitions, and theatre-based outputs designed to reach wider publics and decision-makers.
Through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship at the University of Leicester
These sites are approached as connected spaces