I’ve been very lucky and honoured to share conference spaces and stages with so many amazing queer and trans academics in the last few months. I wanted to share my experiences of three conferences, the first three of many to come I am sure!
Beyond Reflections: Trans+ Conference
15th May, Bournemouth University
I was privileged to attend Beyond Reflections Trans+ Conference at Bournemouth University supported by Transvox and The Facial Team. I spoke on my PhD research and work with Trans Aware Cancer Care.
It was great to connect with so many people doing amazing work in the community and the academy to expand trans+ knowledge, community and care.
It was amazing to share a stage with most of the Non-Binary Research Collective to talk about non-binary methodology.
It was a joy to spend time and present with the Trans Aware Cancer Care team. I felt well looked after throughout the day as a presenter and attendee. I laughed so much and really enjoyed myself as well as learning a thing or two! The BR and BU team did an amazing job and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
FGEN: Trans Liberation Now!
21st June, Kings College London
I had a great time at Feminist Gender Equality Network Trans Liberation Now! Conference presenting on health inequities faced by trans+ Autistic people in the UK. My talk focused on my positionality and the difficulty/joy of doing trans Autistic research as a trans Autistic researcher in academia.
I got great feedback from my poem and loved bumping into some lovely familiar faces and meeting new ones too.
The Trans Liberation Now! conference assembled a wide array of scholars, activists and professionals who fight against organised transphobia and work towards gender liberation.
There is nothing more sacred than sharing space, knowledge and stories with other trans and queer people and this conference was a great opportunity to do just that.
Trans Virtual Centre of Excellence: Queer Acts of Hope
8th July, Guildhall School of Music & Drama
I was pleased to be part of the online line-up at the first annual symposium of TVCE sharing my monologue/meander titled Coming into my Power as a Trans Autistic Researcher. It was an honour to share space with so many free-thinkers, creatives, activists and amazing humans talking on trans and queer issues. The conference was described:
“We gather-not only across time zones and geographies, but across the wild, tender architectures of queer hope and trans liberation. The first annual symposium of the TVCE arrives not as an event, but as an unfolding-of voices, gestures, ruptures, and reimaginings.
We convene in resistance and in reverence.
For trans joy. For queer wonder.
For scholarship that pulses with life.
For art that heals and haunts.
For each other.
This symposium listens sideways.
It offers space for contradiction, becoming, unbecoming, and bloom.
It is stitched with glitch and with grace.
You are not only welcome-you are necessary.
Whether you arrive in fatigue or fire, in softness or passion, you belong here.
Bring your questions. Bring your becoming.
Bring your breath.
You are our community and together we will hold each other.
We begin now. We begin together.”
I can’t say any better than that! I am so excited to be in-person with everyone next year and to see where we go with TVCE.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE. KATIE MUNDAY (THEY/THEM). TRANSMISSION
Coming into my power as a trans Autistic activist and academic
Sitting at the intersection of researcher and activist is exhilarating, validating. frustrating and exhausting. Those of us who live at this overlap, and sit in unbelonging in many spaces, also have a power. The power to create our own family within academia and activism. To create our own rules whilst skirting those of the institutions we work in. We are the radical researchers who stand on the shoulders of giants and hold the ladders for others to climb.
Some of us are working class, dropping “h’s” during our Vivas, some of us are first-generation University students. Many of us were not meant for the rigid rules of academia. We were meant to subvert, to change, disorientate and dismantle. Through this monologue, I share my own experiences of coming into my power as a trans Autistic activist and accidental academic. Including what the academy makes of a fat, trans, queer, chronically ill disabled mad person and how I’m doing it anyways.
Bio: Katie Munday is an ESRC-funded PhD student Exploring Trans and Gender Diverse Autistic Adults’ Experiences of Health and Social Care Inequity. They have worked with Disabled people in the youth sectors and early years for over 10 years. They are also a community researcher exploring cancer care inequity for both transgender and Disabled people. They are involved in several research projects in the charity sector on Disabled and gender diverse people’s experiences of inequity in cancer services. They have spoken about their research findings at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer. They have published on Autistic people’s experiences of cancer services, substance use services, and gender identity healthcare. Katie is a co-founder of the Autistic Substance Use Network (ASUN), which hopes to address the knowledge gap in the understanding of Autistic substance use and its impact on policy and services. (https://autsun.org/) Katie is Autistic, Disabled, trans and queer.
These conferences have been such a joy to me, and have given me lots to mull over, unpick, unpack and arrive at. I want to thank Beyond Reflections, FGEN and TVCE for inviting me, for holding me and allowing me to share my research and my story. It is an honour to be held with your strong softness.
For now, I sit in the wake of these group awakenings and rest before more growing.
[Pictures off my zine made at the TVCE conference. It is on plain white paper, has lots of coloured writing, star stickers and small diamond-like stickers too. The zine is called Joy, Small Everyday Joy.]
