Quick Chat: LGBT Academics in International Contexts

In recent years, many post-secondary institutions across North America have taken important steps to create more inclusive campuses. 

Some initiatives undertaken include developing accessible spaces, implementing strategies to strengthen, grow and embrace diversity, and articulating policies to create safe spaces where everyone feels comfortable on campus.

These changes aren’t just for the undergraduate and graduate students who attend these colleges and universities.  They’ve also been developed for academic and support staff, so that everyone can feel they belong.

But challenges still arise.  For example, what happens when an academic who identifies as a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community heads to a conference overseas, to a country where being gay is punishable by prison, or worse?

Kaela Jubas wanted to know more about the experiences of LGBT academics as they relate to their identities—both at home and abroad—and she’s in the process of compiling the information she’s gathered.  In this Quick Chat, the associate professor in the Werklund School of Education discusses some of what she’s learned so far.

Audio:

• Quick Chat (7:01)