Alan Lee

Queer Lives and Trans* Formations Conference Registration We are looking forward to welcoming you to the Queer Lives and Trans* Formations Conference on 30-31 March, 2026! As the conference will be taking place online, we ask that you register to attend by c...

Registration for the "Queer Lives and Trans* Formations: Reimagining Weimar Germany's LGBTQ+ Histories and Cultures" online conference is now live! Sign up to join us 30 - 31 March (Australia: 31 March - 1 April). With speakers from 6 (!) time zones & keynotes from Jonah Garde & Camilla Smith!

Our 'Picture Me' research project now has a write-up on the German Visual History network's website! We are developing new methods for queer visual and historical research.

If you're interested in what I am working on at the moment, check it out: visual-history.de/en/project/j... 🌈🎓

Book cover: Tales of the Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains by John Grindrod. It has an orange border with text in black and yellowy orange and features a black and white photograph of two men embracing each other as they stand in a kitchen.

Front cover of I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany by Samuel Clowes Huneke

A book cover, showing the title 'Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation' by Tom Hulme. It is lavender coloured with yellow text, and shows two men sat on a bench, c. 1935.

Book cover: My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond by Hugh Ryan. The bright yellow cover features a marble stature of two men suggestively wrestling, on top of which sits an unspooling mix tape.

LGBTQ+ History Month (UK) is almost over, but #queerhistory is being made all year round! 🌈📚🗃️

Here are just a few fab-looking books that will be published in the coming months by wonderful authors @grindrod.bsky.social, @schuneke.bsky.social, @tomhulme.bsky.social, @hughryan.bsky.social . . . 1/2

As far as I know, farm archives have never really been used to track queer histories before. Given they mostly record the financial ongoings on a given farm, you can understand why. However, my year of research at The MERL has proved their potential.

Find out more in this blog:

📢 Publication day is looming for #TheLongDeathOfAdolfHitler! You can join me at The Barnes Bookshop, London on Thursday 12 March to hear more about the book, grab your copy - and enjoy some wine in the process! Booking essential via: www.eventbrite.com/e/1983442476...
#BSkyhistorians #NewBooks 📚

Actually I do have an abstract to write given that I mentally could not manage that last week alongside all the edits but! it's otherwise a nice quiet week

oh no ): get well soon bestie!! I shouldn't get as overwhelmingly busy until the last week of March now so planning will be easier!!

OMG I OWE YOU A REPLY SORRY I was Out Of It this weekend

It's unnerving how quiet my week looks.. Checking over my lecture for tomorrow and writing a blog post. Perhaps I'll get to starting my stack of new books?

Winding country road through green hills with large white text reading: “Trans+ rights are a mess since the Supreme Court. How did we get here?” A signpost labelled “Milestones” lists “Gender Recognition – 167M,” “Media Ridicule – 1M,” “Deception as to Sex – 302M,” and “Your Rights? New Limited Series.” QueerAF logo at bottom.

Our new series traces the history shaping Trans+ rights in the UK - written by some of the UK’s most respected journalists including 
@ludovicparsons.bsky.social, @jessothomson.co.uk and @sasha98.bsky.social 👇

Join 10,000+ readers: https://www.wearequeeraf.com/milestones/

Enjoyed writing about my cultural history approach to #TheLongDeathOfAdolfHitler in the latest issue to Aspects of History... aspectsofhistory.com/product/subs...

Thank you Caroline! Hopefully it makes for a good read..

Submitting a full draft of your thesis at nearly 10pm on a Friday when nearly every book you own is scattered around you in piles and there are notes EVERYWHERE was not how I planned for this week to end but I sure am glad that it's over and I'm sure the euphoria will hit me tomorrow after some rest

Nearly everything is on one full coherent document for my thesis and the only thing preventing me from burning out is the sheer excitement of watching it all come together

LEGAL ENTANGLEMENTS: Law, Rights and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945-1989 by Sebastian Gehrig @sebastiangehrig.bsky.social is now available in paperback!

Find out more here: bit.ly/45GNX2l

Review from @choicereviews.bsky.social

#History

On another note, allow me to shout out Hájková’s personal resilience. I wanted to do so in my review, but ran out of words. The story behind this research is deeply inspiring, and her dedication to the history she researches and the people she interacts with as a result shines through in this book.

Reviews are always limited in their wordcount, of course, but so are posts, so allow me to TL;DR: I think this book has huge implications for queer studies of the Holocaust. There is SO MUCH on offer here. I strongly recommend anyone and everyone picks up a copy for themselves.

People without history are dust: queer desire in the Holocaust Published in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (Ahead of Print, 2026)

My review of Anna Hájková’s @ankahajkova.bsky.social's brilliant book, People Without History are Dust has been published by @holocauststudies.bsky.social

You can read my review here:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

While I appreciate the reasons for sharing drafts or submissions of your text at my University using 1.5 line spacing, it's an absolute headache for me to read my own work with this format for some reason..

Blue Neighborhood turning 10 has made me realise it's nearly been a decade since I came out and that's a strange thought

The High Court has made clear that the draft Code of Practice is wrong about the law. Make sure your MP tells the Minister it now has to be rejected 👇

Why has Hitler taken so long to die? The way that Hitler died is fundamentally unique in the history of 20th century dictators. But does that explain his cultural afterlife?

Very pleased to see that the first media feature pertaining to my forthcoming book is out now with @bigissue.com! Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about why Hitler has had such a "long death": www.bigissue.com/culture/book...

Let it never be said the rainbow flag cannot be subversive!

The Pride flag at the Stonewall Monument is re-raised!

New Yorkers won’t let Donald Trump erase LGBTQ+ history, or trample the rights of our LGBTQ+ neighbors.

My copy of Matt Cook's new book Writing Queer History has just arrived!! I've been looking forward to this book coming out for some time now. It's a shame I am just about to submit my thesis and won't be able to apply it to my current research, but I am excited to see what uses it has in the future

*quickly revises the epilogue to my thesis*

Trump administration removes Rainbow Flag from Stonewall National Monument The Trump administration removed a large Rainbow Flag from a flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument, the National Park Service confirmed to Gay City News

“This is a deliberate act of erasure . . . The Pride Flag is history, resistance, and Pride born at Stonewall itself. Taking it down does not diminish our community. It exposes an administration afraid of visibility and truth."

gaycitynews.com/trump-rainbo...

🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🍎

AIDS in Soviet Russia: why and how I wrote this book - Manchester University Press “I personally know HIV-positive heads of regional administrations, Russian Ministers, State Duma deputies, lieutenant generals, Heroes of Russia, famous artists, popular TV presenters, directors, edit...

As part of our @lgbthm.bsky.social campaign, author Rustam Alexander has written a piece for our Blog about how and why he wrote his latest book, AIDS in Soviet Russia. Read it here: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/02...

Buy a copy with 30% on our website until 28th Feb. #booksky

(which, as it goes, is good because I get to spend the rest of this month doing exactly that before submission.. but it's nice that it feels like a passion project again rather than a slog to get over the finish line as it began to feel!)

Last week it felt like the thesis was going to completely overwhelm me. The conclusion was daunting and I couldn't want to finish and get some rest. But as I'm bringing everything together, I'm remembering just how exciting this project is! I feel like I want to go over everything all over again