COLLECTION
Queerness in Aotearoa
Welcome to the Queerness in Aotearoa* Research and Resource Special Collection
This work-in-progress collection is a gathering point. It is designed to bring together research and resources by and for the queer community of Aotearoa New Zealand.
(*The current title is a holding title. An official title will be co-developed by the queer research community.)
Aotearoa’s queer community has its own unique voice. It also represents countless different identities and communities. The acronym ‘LGBTTQIA+’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, takatāpui, queer, intersex, asexual and more) represents just a fraction of that diversity. Further layers of colour shine through with cultural aspects, intersectionality, neurodiversity, disabilities and more. This Queerness in Aotearoa collection seeks to make a space for the voices of queer folks in research.
Research
Community Research is an organisation that helps make research led by diverse communities more visible and accessible. We hold a growing collection of research by and for queer people in Aotearoa.
We’re also partnering with other Aotearoa-based research institutes who hold their own queer research collections.
If you’ve done research in this space, and it follows the values and principles of our Code of Practice, add yours to the collection!
Resources
Folk within the queer community and its allies have expressed desire to better understand the range of research, activities, and organisations running across the motu.
As part of developing this collection, we’ve brought together a list of organisations and resources. See more below (and if you’re part of or know of a resource which isn’t listed, please feel free to pass it on to us).
Connection
To support the community of queer researchers, Community Research is running a series of ‘Tautoko Sessions’ – informal, online gatherings to discuss research, share ideas, and invite opportunities to collaborate. These sessions are open to people from the queer community, and its allies.
If you’re interested in attending, you can sign up above to receive invites and general updates.
Sign up for this collection's mailing list
You’ll get updates and invites to events, including our tautoko sessions and webinars, and other good stuff. We don’t send heaps of emails, don’t worry.
You can also sign up for Community Research’s monthly general newsletter, Ngā Kete, over here.
Collection goals and intentions
Community Research and our partners are seeking to create a kete/collection of research, resources, whakaaro and kōrero relating to queer-led community research in Aotearoa.
This collection aims to collate research made by queer people for queer communities: so that it is easy to find, to lift the visibility of our queer researchers, and also fosters a sense of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over the research taonga made by a community who are often made unsafe in other spaces.
It uses the term ‘queer’ in its broadest and most welcoming umbrella-terminology sense, and is explicitly welcoming of trans experiences, takatāpui, MVPFAFF+, intersex, and other cultures and communities’ expressions of gender, self, and sexuality.
We hope to help build connections within the queer research community so that community members can find each other’s research, collaborate more, and further enhance the existing sense of community and connectedness within these networks of people. We want this collection to be a way for people to find information and become more knowledgeable about the diverse experiences of queerness in Aotearoa.
We celebrate all forms of community-led knowledge-making. When our organisation talk about ‘research,’ that includes everything from community-based mahi, mātauranga and lived experience, knowledge-making within organisations and the public service, all the way to academic research.
We (Community Research kaimahi, including both members and allies of the queer community) particularly want to use this opportunity to focus on the diversity within queer communities: to uphold and share the stories of tangata whenua and the ‘different ways of knowing, being, and doing’ which are expressed within the different cultures, generations, and groups who are present in and around queer research spaces.
Services and resources:
Read collection of research below
This is a living collection. If you have research which is community-led and features the voices of LGBTTQIA+ folks from Aotearoa New Zealand, please consider adding it to our collection.
Ngā mihi nui to all of those researchers and participants who have contributed to the collection so far.
Partners who hold further research
Want more research? On top of our collection, we’re partnering with other organisations.
Check out Ia~ The Rainbow Collection, a collection of research by AUT staff and students.
“The Rainbow Collection gives you instant access to over twenty years of compelling and impactful research, that relates directly to our communities, conducted by AUT staff and students. This includes master’s and doctoral theses, research articles and book chapters, from multiple disciplines.”
We want to say a special thank you and ngā mihi to Dr. Elizabeth Kerekere for gifting us her time and wisdom as we started the process of setting up this collection. Dr. Kerekere has led several key pieces of research, all of which you can acess on the website Takatapui.nz, or below.
