Below is a list of my forthcoming public events – it would be lovely to see you at any of them!
If you’d like to receive infrequent emails to update you on my books and public events (or you’d like a more reliable and ethical alternative to following me on social media), you can sign up to my mailing list.
And if you can’t make any of these events, why not book your own? Take a look at the talks or heritage activities I can offer.
May 2026
Wednesday 6 May, 19.00: Queer History Club – Memory and Liberation in Argentina and South Africa
What does it mean to be told to move on from a history that is still shaping your life?
This workshop brings together histories and archival materials of travestis in Argentina and drag queens in South Africa – communities that survived dictatorship and apartheid, only to find that promises of liberation left many forms of violence intact.
Through their histories and memories, we explore how queer and trans people in both contexts have refused to simply let go of the past, instead building creative, collective ways of remembering, resisting and healing.
Through a hands-on archiving exercise, participants will explore how the same history can be told differently depending on audience, and how the language of rights and freedoms shapes, and sometimes distorts, what gets remembered, and for whom.
About the facilitators: Patricio Simonetto and Megan Robertson both research and teach in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Their work focuses on gender and sexuality in Global South contexts, and they jointly co-direct the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies.
Sunday 10 May, 14.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – City Centre
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-city-centre-copy
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour, historian Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Leeds’ queer history highlights. From Pride to squats, from 1840s court cases to 1990s raves, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Wednesday 20 May, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – LS6
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-ls6-1
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Woodhouse and Hyde Park’s queer history highlights. From early Pride to squats, from wartime genderqueers to gay hotlines, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Thursday 28 May, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – Music & Nightlife
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-music-nightlife-2
Where did Soft Cell’s Marc Almond hear his first disco tune? Why did people stick money to the floor in The New Penny? And what happened when a bunch of lesbians wanted to start a pool tournament?
Find out, and discover the history of Leeds’s queer music and nightlife scenes, on this new walking tour of Leeds City Centre.
June 2026
Wednesday 3 June: Queer History Club – Silences, Signals, and Subtext: A Queer Look at Emma Novello
Tickets: coming soon!
Discover the queer story of forgotten nineteenth-century artist Emma Aloysia Novello (1814-1902) with Dr RJ Wade, Exhibitions Curator (Cultural Collections) at the University of Leeds. Drawing on newly examined archival materials, this talk reconsiders Novello’s artistic practice, her resistance to gendered constraints and the intimate networks of women who shaped her world. From her convent education and self‑directed training in defiance of Royal Academy exclusion, to her close relationships with women artists and her later institutionalisation under patriarchal authority, Novello’s story invites queer readings that illuminate how nonconformity, chosen affinities and gender‑noncompliance were policed (and how they persisted nonetheless). Through queer methods of interpretation, we’ll trace the silences, tensions and possibilities in Novello’s letters, travels and artistic collaborations, revealing a life that unsettles Victorian norms and opens space for LGBTQ+ historical imagination. Using Emma’s artwork, we’ll move into a reparative art/writing workshop, using Emma’s own paintings to imagine an alternative, better future for her, and thinking about how we can use creative practice and queer community to look after our own mental health.
Content warnings: mental ill health, financial coercion and incarceration. There’s no expectation to disclose anything about your own mental health unless you want to.
About the facilitator: Dr RJ Wade is Exhibitions Curator (Cultural Collections) at the University of Leeds and Deputy Editor of Art History, the journal of the Association for Art History.
Saturday 6 June, 14.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – Music & Nightlife
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-music-nightlife-2
Where did Soft Cell’s Marc Almond hear his first disco tune? Why did people stick money to the floor in The New Penny? And what happened when a bunch of lesbians wanted to start a pool tournament?
Find out, and discover the history of Leeds’s queer music and nightlife scenes, on this new walking tour of Leeds City Centre.
Tuesday 9 June: Online Roundtable – Intersex History Today
Tickets: https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/seminars/history-sexuality
Join four leading scholars of intersex history – Leah DeVun, Candice Lyons, Onni Gust and David Andrew Griffiths – to discuss the state of the field today. What do we stand to gain or lose – academically or politically – from understanding ‘intersex history’ as a separate field from the history of sex, or trans history? What are the intersections between intersex history and race? And what exciting directions will the field take next?
Wednesday 17 June, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – City Centre
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-city-centre-copy
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour, historian Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Leeds’ queer history highlights. From Pride to squats, from 1840s court cases to 1990s raves, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Tuesday 23 June, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – LS6
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-ls6-1
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Woodhouse and Hyde Park’s queer history highlights. From early Pride to squats, from wartime genderqueers to gay hotlines, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
July 2026
Wednesday 1 July: Queer History Club – Reading for Queerness in Seventeenth-Century Sources: talk and workshop
Tickets: coming soon!
How do we interpret the language that Renaissance people used to describe queerness, when their terms for sexual preferences or acts are highly ambiguous and do not match modern identity categories? Historians James Hobbes and Scarlett Stevens (University of York) will share their thoughts – including why focusing on high-status men, like Netflix faves James VI/I and George Villiers, can be limiting – and lead a workshop on developing your ‘queer eye’ for history. Using the concept of ‘queer potentiality’, we’ll explore meaningful ways to engage with seventeenth-century individuals and queerness beyond labels, and discover queer angles to historical sources that we might never have spotted before.
About the facilitators: Scarlett Stevens and James Hobbes are PhD students at the University of York. James is interested in the seventeenth-century political imagination; his thesis focuses on the role of poison, witchcraft, and sexual scandal in depictions of seventeenth-century court favourites. Scarlett is interested in queer, gender and reading histories; her thesis considers the erotic and pleasure-inducing potential of reading in the 17th century.
Tuesday 14 July, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – Music & Nightlife
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-music-nightlife-2
Where did Soft Cell’s Marc Almond hear his first disco tune? Why did people stick money to the floor in The New Penny? And what happened when a bunch of lesbians wanted to start a pool tournament?
Find out, and discover the history of Leeds’s queer music and nightlife scenes, on this new walking tour of Leeds City Centre.
Saturday 18 July, 14.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – City Centre
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-city-centre-copy
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour, historian Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Leeds’ queer history highlights. From Pride to squats, from 1840s court cases to 1990s raves, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Sunday 26 July, 14.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – LS6
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-ls6-1
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Woodhouse and Hyde Park’s queer history highlights. From early Pride to squats, from wartime genderqueers to gay hotlines, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
August 2026
Thursday 6 August, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – City Centre
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-city-centre-copy
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour, historian Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Leeds’ queer history highlights. From Pride to squats, from 1840s court cases to 1990s raves, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Sunday 16 August, 14.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – Music & Nightlife
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-music-nightlife-2
Where did Soft Cell’s Marc Almond hear his first disco tune? Why did people stick money to the floor in The New Penny? And what happened when a bunch of lesbians wanted to start a pool tournament?
Find out, and discover the history of Leeds’s queer music and nightlife scenes, on this new walking tour of Leeds City Centre.
Wednesday 26 August, 18.00: Leeds’s Hidden Queer History walking tour – LS6
Starting point: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3BR
Tickets: https://thebookishtype.co.uk/products/leeds-queer-history-tour-ls6-1
Queer history is all around us. The building we walk past on the way to work might have witnessed the first meeting of a campaign group; the bus stop we use every day might be remembered fondly as the site of someone’s first kiss. But like many marginalised experiences, too often this history remains invisible.
On this walking tour Kit Heyam will take you on a tour of Woodhouse and Hyde Park’s queer history highlights. From early Pride to squats, from wartime genderqueers to gay hotlines, you’ll see the city and its past in a new light.
Kit Heyam 