TVCE x BiGS Existing Otherwise: A Trans+ Symposium
About this Event
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?
💜 On the theme of Exisiting 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.
🔍 Programme & Access
- Tickets for our 2025 event sold out. Early-Bird and First Wave In-Person tickets for 2026 have also gone. We have now released a second wave of In-Person tickets!
- 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.
🎓Line Up
In-Person Exclusive
Nic Aaron (they/them) - Birkbeck University of London
Being Trans and not Complying in Advance
Christene Adiele (she/they) - Birkbeck University of London
Glitter and Graft: Visibility, Belonging and the Space Between
Emmett Alexander (he/they) - University of Stirling
Acknowledging realities, and imagining alternatives: What does a good life look like to you?
Eleanor Beaton (she/her) - University of Edinburgh
Who is the legitimate subject of trans research? Or, if you’d asked me that summer what a hospital was…
Avi Ben-Zeev (he/him) - San Francisco State University
Our Trans* and Nonbinary Stories: A Writing Workshop
Raphael Bez-Cryer (he/him) - University of Manchester
Looking Otherwise: Visualising Trans in Photography Over the Last 100 Years
Giulia Casalini (they/them) and Niya B (she/her)
We Are Here
Oscar Davies (they/them) - Garden Court Chambers
The Binary Trap: Imagining Intersex and Non-Binary Recognition Beyond the Limits of Current UK Law
Leslie Deere (she/they) - Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Held Interval: An Embodied Listening Session
Dane Eissler (they/he/it) - Trans Art Institute of Creative Research, USA & Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Disruptions from Elsewhere
Sega Halsall (he/him) & Kenya Sterling (he/they) - Queer Circle
Remapping Masculinity
K. A. Harper (she/they) - [independent]
Everything is the past, rehashed
Sammy Holden (they/them) - TVCE
A Collective Scream
Hafren Jones (she/faer); Jamie Jewkes (he/they); Sandra Duffy Golden (they/she) - University of Bristol
What do Bristol trans futures look like?
Amanda Kamanda (she/her) - Minority Inclusion Front UK
The Manifesto and Flashmob of resistance
Alice Kentridge (they/them) and Iggy Robinson (they/them) - Queer Dream Matrix
"The pink octopus beckons me”: trans social dreaming
S Lamble (they/them) and Nim Ralph (they/them) - Birkbeck University of London & [independent]
Rethinking Trans Safety: A workshop on building transformative approaches
Asha Okasili-Henry (they/he) - Birkbeck University of London
Reclaiming the Monster: Transgender Horror and Individual Legibility
Cole Matthews (they/he) - Cardiff University
Trans+ Collage Workshop
Kae Rose(any) and Sarah Boira (they/them) - Birkbeck University of London & University of Sussex
Where Do These Porous Bodies End? A Workshop on Eco-Identity
Musa Sharples (he/they) - University of Brighton
DIY HRT and Liberated Futures
Nat Stepanovic (they/she) - UCL
Inbetweens: Non-Binary Images Across Media
Max Strassfeld (he/they) - University of Southern California
Building an Archive: an introduction to zine making
In-Person (and hybrid)
Matteo Bassetti (he/they) - University of Essex
Defining pathologization as torture: graphic auto-ethnography of a legal thesis
Daniela Blanco (she/her) - Birkbeck University of London / Federeal University of Rio de Janeiro (Capes-PIPD)
Butler, Carson’s, and Antigone’s Claim: Challenging Norms of Kinship and Gender
Raich Frith (they/them) - Queen Mary University of London
Myths, Monsters and the Meaning of Names in Trans+ Law
Aurelia Guo (she/her) - Goldsmiths University of London
McNally, Desire and Knowledge
Rae Harrington (they/them) - Mayor of London's Office
The significance of everyday conversation in the pursuit of trans and non-binary selfhood
Thomas Jeram-West (they/them) - University of Chichester
‘Telephone’ – A fugitive teach-in exploring transmission and inheritance
Susie Jolly (any) & Thi Bogossian (they/them)
This is Not About Breasts
april forrest lin 林森 (they/them)
dancing on the soft knife
Hina Baloch (she/they) - SOAS, University of London
The Border Begins Here
EK Myerson (they/them)
Magic with EK - Episode 147: Transsexual illusions
Zoë Playdon (she/her) - University of London
Precarious Lives: Telling Trans Elders Stories
Nina Rivera (she/her/siya) - the centric lab
Joy in Precarity: Karaoke as Rematriation
Sabine Sharp (they/them) - University of Manchester
tbc
Issy Stephens (she/they) & Nella Gocał-Mcconkey (he/him) - WILD Young Parents Project
Nella
Lucy Lamia Tatarusanu (she/they) - Goldsmiths University of London
After A Century
Online Exclusive
Hosted by Mika Gratzke - (they/them) Scotland's Rural College & TVCE Member
Daniel Holiday (they/them) - University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, USA
Let's Make A Community Zine About Being Trans in Academia!
Sacha Mead (they/them) - University of Brighton
Breathing. Being. Bound: experiences of a nonbinary, transmasculine, white-passing, working-class sculptor in the face of oppression
Heather Sincavage (she/her) - Wilkes University, USA
to hold is to be held: the work of untying
🏳️⚧️ What to expect
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.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
