On Being A Queer Primatologist: Challenges and Progress in Being LBGTQ+ in Field-Based STEM Research

press release: Tuesday, March 10, 12:00pm - 1:15pm, Room 6240, William H. Sewell Social Sciences Building

Although the past decades have seen increases in the legal protections and rights of LGBTQ+ individuals in many nations, this progress is rarely felt outside urban areas. This poses special risks for LGBTQ+ biologists and other scientists who work in field-based conditions, both at home and abroad. These risks are by no means simple or universal, as multiple identities (sex, gender identity, gender presentation, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status), their intersections, and how they are perceived in the field context can compound or mediate them. This discussion will explore some of these risks specific to the LGBTQ+ experience and how they intersect, at their core, with gender-based violence. Although this discussion is rooted in the experience of the speaker as a white, male-presenting queer man having conducted over 70 months of fieldwork in rural western and southern Africa and Latin America, there will be discussion of published accounts rooted in other identities. The goal of this talk is an interactive discussion of these issues and how to mediate them, both personally and institutionally, drawing on emerging best practices; audience members are encouraged to participate with their own experiences, given they feel safe to do so.

Christopher Schmitt is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Boston University, where he is also Affiliated Faculty in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. He is on the Steering Committee of the American Associations of Physical Anthropology Committee on Diversity's LGBTQQIAA Interest Group (gAyAPA), and the faculty director of the Undergraduate and Graduate oSTEM (Out in STEM) student groups at Boston University. He graduated from UW Madison (B.S. English Literature and Zoology, 2003), where he served as the Bisexual Issues Coordinator at the Gender & Sexuality Campus Center.