Queering Research: Southeast Asian Scholars Reflect On The Challenges In Conducting LGBQ+ Research

Colonial-era laws persist in several Southeast Asian (SEA) countries, criminalising lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals based on their identities and expressions. While some SEA nations have made progress in recognising LGBTQ+ human rights—such as Thailand’s legalisation of same-sex marriage—much more remains to be done for LGBTQ+ communities to achieve equity in health, social, and political outcomes. Although overseas studies on the experiences of LGBTQ+ scholars navigating the cisheterosexist academic pipeline are emerging, little research examines the enablers and barriers faced by SEA researchers conducting LGBTQ+ research. The widespread disinformation about LGBTQ+ health and the systemic lack of institutional and equity-based funding make addressing this gap critical. The 2024 SEAIP Seed Grant enabled LGBTQ+ scholars to come together to collaboratively reflect on and share the challenges we encountered while conducting LGBTQ-affirming research in SEA. Through a series of reflective journaling exercises and focus group discussions, we gathered pages of transcripts for analysis using reflexive thematic analysis. Data collection is still ongoing (as of February 2025) as we continue to recruit researchers from harder-to-reach countries such as Myanmar. Preliminary findings from inductive coding highlight challenges such as difficulty securing ethics approval, navigating conflicts between maintaining self-integrity and meeting religious expectations, and the dominance of Eurocentric norms that reinforce individualism and objectivity—hindering Indigenous and culturally based visions of a collective LGBTQ+ future. In this session, we will discuss the challenges of conducting LGBTQ+ research and how researchers overcome and resist the pathologisation of identity, including within psychology. We will also outline our goals for developing a research agenda for LGBTQ+ studies in SEA. We welcome students and scholars to join the conversation on changing the status quo of labelling LGBTQ+ research as “sensitive” and actively identifying solutions to address LGBTQ+ inequities in academia.