TVCE x BiGS Existing Otherwise: A Trans+ Symposium

Exisiting Otherwise – The 2nd Annual TVCE Symposium
24th July 2025 | Birkbeck, University of London
Free | Hybrid | Trans+ Led

The Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence (TVCE), in collaboration with Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality Forum (BiGS), are proud to co-convene this year’s symposium under the theme, Existing Otherwise. Together we have invited trans+ artists, scholars, activists, and their allies to explore existence itself as a radical method.

At a time when trans+ lives are increasingly governed, scrutinised, and contested across legal, medical, and cultural domains, we turn toward generative possibilities: what does it mean to foreground ways of living, knowing, and relating that exceed, evolve, reframe, or refuse the normative structures through which legitimacy is policed and normativity enforced? How might queerness not only survive, but flourish, connect, and continually remake the world otherwise?

Existing Otherwise centres the already-present: the lived, embodied, fugitive, and relational practices through which trans+ people continue to create and transform the conditions of the present. Delegates and presenters will consider the expansive possibilities of trans+ spaces; how wisdom, learning, and celebration are fostered through engaging with and recognising one another across the full breadth of trans+ experience: including elders, the global majority, disabled and neurodivergent people, and the many other intersectional dialogues that shape individual lives. Rather than knowledge flowing in any single direction, we invite a model of mutual exchange, where every identity and position is understood as both a source of insight and a site of learning. We therefore invite our community on the day to collaboratively explore how, across all our differences, we might sustain more expansive, connected futures.

• Full line-up of speakers to be confirmed. Tickets for our 2025 event sold out so grab your chance to book an Early-Bird in-person ticket to avoid missing out!
• Tickets are free. While we’re unable to offer financial support for travel or accommodation, we’ve ensured all ticketing remains cost-free to maximise access.
• Please note your access or support requirements when registering for tickets.
• Details of our hybird and online offer will follow once the full programme has been announced and sepearte ticket options will be made availble for those joining online.

In keeping with TVCE’s queer de-centre strategy, the symposium will host contributions that disrupt and subvert the norms of traditional academic spaces. Expect a dynamic mix of presentations, performances, workshops, teach-ins, unpanels, dialogues, installations, and interventions. These sessions are designed not only to share knowledge but to reimagine how knowledge is held, felt, and co-created.

Please check back here or follow TVCE on Bluesky or Linkedin for updates.

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Host or Publisher Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence