The famend cultural historian Matt Cook dinner is to turn out to be the UK’s first totally endowed professor of LGBTQ+ historical past in a newly created submit at Mansfield School, Oxford.
Cook dinner, who has written extensively on queer city life, the Aids disaster and queer domesticity, will turn out to be the primary Jonathan Cooper chair of the historical past of sexualities later this 12 months.
It’s the primary totally endowed specialist submit of its form within the UK, funded by a £4.9m donation from the Arcadia Fund, a grant-making charity that has donated thousands and thousands of kilos to organisations engaged on human and pure range.
He stated of his appointment: “I will probably be working exhausting to boost our understanding of the LGBTQ previous and to point out how these histories matter now. I’m tremendously excited to have this chance to assist enlarge Oxford’s repute for innovative work on this burgeoning discipline.”
Cook dinner has a background in literary and cultural principle, and a robust curiosity in queer city, public and neighborhood historical past. He labored with the Nationwide Belief on their Prejudice and Delight 12 months in 2017 and co-authored the related LGBTQ+ guidebook.
He has additionally suggested on neighborhood and oral historical past, archive and museum tasks together with Heritage England’s Delight of Place and the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Past the Binary.
Cook dinner will take up the submit in October after 18 years at Birkbeck, College of London, the place he was professor of contemporary historical past and led the gender and sexuality research MA programme.
The brand new chair is called after human rights lawyer Jonathan Cooper, an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and commentator on points resembling trans rights, conversion practices and the rights of individuals dwelling with HIV, who died in 2021.
Cook dinner stated: “Jonathan Cooper was a passionate advocate for LGBTQ rights, and it’s an enormous honour to take up this new professorship in his title … I see it as a means of honouring and furthering Jonathan Cooper’s inspirational legacy.”
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Mansfield School’s principal, Helen Mountfield, stated: “Matt will probably be an important slot in our proudly nonconformist faculty neighborhood which respects, protects and promotes a various vary of voices and narratives. I do know that Jonathan would’ve been so honoured and delighted to see his legacy commemorated by this chair.”
Rob Iliffe, the historical past school board chair, added: “[Matt’s] presence will probably be a supply of inspiration to college students and colleagues alike, and it’ll improve Oxford’s repute as a frontrunner within the discipline of LGBTQ historical past.”