Queer Agency in (Re)claiming
Cultural Heritage

Workshop

23^rd October 2026, 8.30-17.00
Venue: Ethnographic Museum (Völkerkundemuseum vPST) Heidelberg

This workshop seeks to explore how queer agency reshapes the theoretical and practical boundaries of cultural heritage. Rather than treating heritage as a static repository of the past, we examine it as a contested process of meaning-making in which diverse gender identities and sexualities play a central role. Contributions from the humanities and cultural and social sciences inquire how and why local stakeholders concerned with gender and sexual diversity worldwide choose to employ active strategies to shape, interact with, (re)define, (re)claim, or disrupt what counts as cultural heritage.

08.30-09.00
Marion Wettstein (Heidlberg, Germany)
Welcome and Introduction

09.00-10.30
Visa Immonen (Bergen, Norway)
“Queer activism and the inoperative community: (Re)claiming heritage in the museum”
Lucy-Ellen Bateman (London, UK)
“Queering Heritage Through Resisting Epistemic Objectification”
Hannah Ayres (Warwick, UK)
“Carving paths, clearing blockages: queer agency and the affective labour of museum re/presentation”

11.00-12.30
Miriam Weßels (Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany)
“Making a Living Together: Queer Agency, Community Support and Livelihoods in the Kathmandu Valley”
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz (Pennsilvania, USA)
“Heritage at the Intersection of Contemporary Linguistic and Queer Rights in Nepal”
Alaka Atreya Chudal (Vienna, Austria)
“Queer (Re)claiming of identity through Hindu Mythic Narratives”

14.15-15.15
Nat Jofré Poblete (Valparaíso, Chile)
“What happens when graffiti on a wall that says „no binaries“ (non-binaries) circulates through a city that has been designated a World Heritage Site?”
Alejandro Mendoza Jaramillo (Madrid, Spain)
“Heritage in Motion: Queer Agency and the (Re)claiming of LGBTIQ+ Urban Memory in Madrid and Bogotá”

15.30-16.30
Serena Silvestri (Rome, Italy)
“Walking Through Queer Bangkok: Whose Memories, Whose City?”
Cüneyt Çakırlar (Nottingham, UK)
“Rediscovering Istanbul’s Kanto Scene in the Longue Durée: Revisionist Nostalgias, Queer Cosmopolitanisms”

16.30-17.00
Final Discussion and round up

Organized by the research tandem “Queer Heritage-Making in Times of Political Turmoil: A Transcultural Approach” funded by the “Flagship Initiative Transforming Cultural Heritage” (FITCH) of the University of Heidelberg.
Part of the Heidelberg Gender & Queer Studies Network