QueerCon

QueerCon was a 2-day conference and festival hosted at FASoS from 1-2 July 2024. The conference brought together 79 participants – scholars and students alike – from 15 universities in 10 countries (and from as far away as Australia!). 22 scholars presented their research in queer studies on topics ranging from "Autobiographical Queer Writing in Russia" to "Amplifying Queer Voices: Representation issues in the era of Large Language Models" and "LGBTIQA+ rights in the EU". Workshops in the afternoon offered participants the opportunity to engage in depth with topics such as "Queer temporalities and (imaginaries of) the climate crisis", "LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in Research", and collaborative art making.  

Instead of traditional keynote lectures, we hosted keynote concerts by musicians from Maastricht and other parts of the Netherlands. These concerts were part of the QueerCon festival. The festival – which also included an Open Mic Night in collaboration with COC Limburg and a Film Night in collaboration with Lumière Maastricht and the Bonnefanten Museum – was a joyful platform for queer and trans* inclusive community-building beyond the university that fostered collaboration between the university and regional organisations.

Overall, QueerCon was a truly interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational event. The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive and stressed the need for an event like QueerCon not just for the university, but for the wider community – locally, nationally, and internationally.