LGBTQIA2S+ public memorialisation and remembrance have become an increasingly visible and contested part of public debate throughout the 21st century. At the sharp end of the “new culture wars”, memorial and remembrance projects engaging with queer subjects or themes often find themselves at the forefront of the ongoing question of who or what should be commemorated in our public spaces, and how. As such, memorialisation across the world is witnessing a re-configuring of its frameworks, with nation-states and their opposing counter-narratives in a sometimes bitterly-contested dialogue. Intersecting with narratives of race, colonialism, gender, activism, resistance, epidemics, ecology, futurity and technology, LGBTQIA2S+ memorials bear witness to intersecting legacies of politics, trauma, commemoration, and community. 

This edited collection seeks to examine how the first twenty-five years of the 21st century have brought increasing visibility and representation to LGBTQIA2S+ communities, their memorials and remembrance practices. This publication seeks to record and examine the practical and theoretical concerns facing LGBTQIA2S+ memorials and remembrance projects at this quarter-century moment: to examine the past and consider the future across a wide range of global memorial and remembrance projects.

Provisionally titled World LGBTQIA2S+ Memorialisation and Remembrance in the 21st Century, the book will be proposed to Routledge, with a view to publication in late 2026. The editor is Dr Thomas Houlton (University of York, UK).

To submit your chapter proposal please send a 300 word abstract (including references) and a short bio for each author (70 words) to thomas.houlton@york.ac.uk by 1 Aug 2025. The selected authors will be expected to deliver a full paper (6,000-8,000 words) by spring 2026.

Case studies, design projects, community narratives, photo essays and other creative proposals are very welcome, alongside creative-critical and academic papers. The discussion of proposed, unrealised or “failed” projects is also welcome. Chapter authors may be from any relevant discipline, including creative practitioners and/or community members outside of the academy. Please focus your proposal on memorialisation or remembrance projects designed and/or completed after the year 2000.

Possible chapter topics may include, but are not limited to:

• LGBTQIA2S+ memorials/monuments, memorialisation practices and other commemorative projects (including countermemorials or counternarratives), within a specific site, community or nation in the 21st century. This might include representations of LGBTQIA2S+ subjects, queer forms of memorialisation, unbuilt or ephemeral projects, performance memorials, and so on.
• Indigenous, 2S, and global south knowledges and practices of remembrance and commemoration, either through commemorative visibility, or modes of meaning-making and memory, that contribute towards queer representations or queer methodologies, however these are understood or interpreted.
• Postcolonial and/or decolonial memorialisation/remembrance approaches that specifically engage with LGBTQIA2S+ constituents or methodologies.
• 21st Century memorial projects or interventions that queer pre-existing monuments, memorialisation spaces, or practices.
• 21st Century LGBTQIA2S+ memorial projects that engage with historical figures or events from previous centuries.
• 21st Century LGBTQIA2S+ memorial projects specifically engaging with film, audio, new media and/or digital forms.
• Queer engagements with monument and remembrance theory, and/or memory studies.
• Critical engagements between LGBTQIA2S+ remembrance practices and theories of queer time, queer failure, queer ecology, queer history, queer phenomenology, queer futurity, and so on.