Welcome to inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what a true really takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs, but thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show.

So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with inclusion bites.

And today is episode 110 with the title Queer stories across borders. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Georgie Williams. Georgie is professionally queer and what that really means is that, is that they specialise in gender and sexuality diversity, field research, platforming, voices and stories in countries around the world. When I asked Georgie to describe their superpower, they said that they made the shocking personable. Hello, Georgie, welcome to the show.

Hello, Joanne. Thank you so much for having me.

Pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for ages. Very excited. So, Georgie, queer stories across borders. Tell us more about your project and what you're up to.

So I started with Queer, which is my little organisation recording stories of gender and sexuality diversity around the globe back in 2019. So originally I was supposed to start my phd in social justice at University College Dublin. I already had a background in gender and sexuality. I had a gender master's from Lund School of Economics, and I had an undergrad in psychology. And so I was very much coming at this from a research perspective. And what I wanted to be doing with my phd and couldn't do was create an oral histories archive of gender and sexuality diversity around the world that was very much steered by the people telling the stories. My concern was that people are very curious about gender and sexuality diversity at this time, but when we look at it from a global perspective, I often believe that people can be exploited by having their stories told in a way that doesn't truly represent their culture and community. And I wanted to be able to share these stories open source as well.

I didn't want people to have to pay to learn about these things in the way that I'd learned about many of these communities in a lecture hall with a lot of student loans to show for it. So what I wanted to do was create this platform where I could share these stories from my field research all around the world for free. So I started queer and I went out into the field five years ago now, and I travelled in the first half of this project through the USA, Japan, Indonesia, and then I conducted the lockdown episodes in the UK and Ireland during COVID And then the second half of this project I conducted in 2022 and 23 that took us through Malta, Turkey, South Africa and Lesotho. So we're still processing those episodes. The final episode of season two will be coming out in about a month or so, which is our episode looking at sexuality diversity in Lesotho culture amongst Sutu people. And I actually interviewed a very senior member of the Lesotho government who works in gender about that. So I disseminate it all open source as a podcast and transcribe it as articles as well. Fascinating.

I mean, I've spoken to you in the past around this project, and when you say you're in the field, I mean, you have been in the field, haven't you? You have been around meeting people in their homes, in their communities, in a wide range, diverse set of backgrounds and experiences beyond just the white middle class view of UK gender politics and gender identity. So what have you kind of, if you had to distil it all down, what have you learned yourself about your own sense of identity and sexuality and gender from a global perspective, rather than just our blinkered UK view?