On 26 March 2025, the Department of International Relations at LSE hosted the book launch of Queer conflict research: new approaches to the study of political violence, with the authors Andrew Delatolla, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds, Jamie J Hagen, Lecturer in Global Politics, University of Manchester, and Samuel Ritholtz, Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford. The session was chaired by Milli Lake, Associate Professor in LSE’s Department of International Relations.
L to R: Milli Lake (Chair), Samuel Ritholtz, Andrew Delatolla, and Jamie J Hagen
Conflict and politics are always personal. Yet, the authors began to culminate these issues in the realm of political violence, providing a mapping for the universe of possibilities of queer conflict research. With a variety of intellectual interests in peace and security, migration studies, sexuality, and race from Colombia to Turkey to Northern Ireland, this framework scrutinises dichotomies of theory and practice, private and public, and personal and political.
The first question investigated what makes research queer and its importance. The authors emphasised pushing beyond the boundaries of how we think about the world in a struggle with dominant paradigms of knowledge. Studying queerness as an empirical phenomenon, rather than putting in the footnotes of marginalisations, expands the potential to understand conflict, peace, and queerness.
Studying queerness as an empirical phenomenon, rather than putting in the footnotes of marginalisations, expands the potential to understand conflict, peace, and queerness.
The authors do this by offering templates in three facets: queer subjects, structures, and methodologies. As queer subjects, emphasis is put on queer peoples and bodies, empirically expanding queer research purviews. Structures focus on gender and sexuality as paradigms, working to dismantle systems of oppression in solidarity with other movements. Lastly, queer as a method collapses dominant notions of temporality and linearity through epistemologically queer methods like poetry and even fiction. This highlights a diversity of trauma and its positioning, allowing timelines to exist without correction. By taking pleasure in opposition and thinking about how peace and safety look different for queer bodies, this work provides that space.
Their research centers invisibilities of violence. They focus on conflict in the home and various continuities of violence in all sectors of life, redefining war as an analytical category. Queering the concept of conflict and peace changes its perception, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of what war and peacebuilding are.
Queering the concept of conflict and peace changes its perception, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of what war and peacebuilding are.
One of the essential tensions questioned by the audience was the simultaneous categorisation of queer as a subject versus the purpose of noncategorisation in queer as a method and even tension between queer and trans conceptions. The authors outlined this as intentional, addressing both the bifurcation of queer bodies while also emphasising the need to think of what queer could mean and implicate.
Another broached query was on the difference between queer peace and liberation, to which the authors respond by investigating whether there can be peace without liberation. Further, liberation movements, such as the work of queer NGOs, may be seen as peacebuilding work. Ultimately, they argue that one must lead with action and theory will follow.
Importantly, the authors provide two appendices, providing good practice guide and emotional work resources, applicable across disciplines and identities, reminding us that we are not alone.
Event report by Jack Patterson
MSc International Relations 2025
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This article represents the views of the author, and not the position of the Department of International Relations, nor of the London School of Economics.
