Amin Ghaziani

On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) has invited me to deliver a keynote address at its upcoming conference in June. I have been tasked to set the agenda for future interdisciplinary and international collaborations on “Studies of Belonging.”

NIAS is the Netherlands’ only independent institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences. Founded in 1970, the Institute is the first of its kind in Europe and the third of its kind in the world.

I am delighted to announce my new publication, “Why Gayborhoods Matter: The Street Empirics of Urban Sexualities.”

Urban scholars should listen closely to LGBTQ+ people, whose street-level experiences and interactions facilitate a more nuanced understanding of gayborhoods than the supra-individual patterns distilled by conventional approaches. In other words, the reasons that residents provide for why their neighborhoods appeal to them showcase the analytic power of the streets for understanding what places mean, why they matter, and for cautioning against claims that cultural districts are becoming outmoded or obsolete.  

My article is part of Springer’s Urban Book Series. The edited volume in which it was published — The Life and Afterlife of Gay Neighborhoods — is available, in its entirety, as open access.

There is a vibrant literature on LGBTQ+ urban geographies, as well as established traditions in sociology and political science on collective action, but research infrequently brings these interdisciplinary fields of sexualities, social movements and urban studies together to explore the emplacement of LGBTQ+ urban activisms. In my new article in Urban Studies, I propose two ways to advance the field.

My graduate student Ryan Stillwagon and I won the 2020 Distinguished Article Award (Honorable Mention) from the Sociology of Sexualities section of the American Sociological Association for “Queer Pop-Ups: A Cultural Innovation in Urban Life.”