The Faculty of Arts & Science’s Queer and Trans Research Lab (QTRL) is driving collaborative research aimed at creating a more inclusive future, thanks to a generous gift of $2.5 million — on top of years of support — from philanthropist Martha McCain.
Support for the lab, which is based at the University of Toronto’s Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at University College enables a wide range of important projects, with work driven by an artist-in-residence, a Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow, Martha LA McCain Faculty Research Fellows and undergraduate and graduate student researchers.
Martha McCain.
“The lab is founded upon the principle of creating connections to learn from one another, to share strengths and, together, to work for a better world — and I’m thrilled to have played a significant role in supporting this work,” says McCain. “I am convinced the bridges built and communities formed through the interdisciplinary efforts of the lab can only assure progress in addressing the local and transnational 2SLGBTQ+ issues of greatest concern to all of us.”
The support enables work that might not otherwise be possible.
Martha McCain.
“This support means everything to me. It’s allowed me to not only continue with my work but to do so comfortably and as part of an inspiring new community of academics, artists and activists,” says Ruth Ramsden-Karelse, 2024–25 Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow.
With the support, Ramsden-Karelse is completing her book, Gays and Girls Make Worlds, which illustrates how gender and sexually diverse communities of colour living under apartheid in South Africa worked to create more just environments. While conducting research in South Africa, she’s also sharing important histories with the very communities affected by them.
“A big part of this work is the academic writing, but also making the work more accessible to the communities in which it really belongs here in South Africa,” she says. “We run educational programs for the 2SLGBTQ+ community and for youth from communities of colour affected by histories of displacement and dispossession. We work to make the legacies of defiance that I write about accessible to them and provide space for them to better understand and embody these legacies.”
Her work is just one of the many areas in which the lab is having an impact. As artist-in-residence, for example, Rhoma Spencer inspired the community by bringing Queen of The Road: The Calypso Rose Musical — the story of Calypso Rose, queer Trinidadian vocalist, musician, songwriter and activist — to a packed Hart House in June.
McCain faculty member TL Cowan is working to establish trans-feminist and queer mental health networks at U of T. Community Organizer-in-Residence Alphonso King Jr. publishes POZplanet, a magazine that provides a space in which HIV+ communities can share their stories, and organizes Mingle, a monthly community event at which people living with HIV and allies can socialize and show support for one another in a warm and welcoming environment.
Ruth Ramsden-Karelse. Photo by Kemeisha McDonald.
And as the 2023–24 Martha LA McCain Faculty Fellow, Naisargi Davé also a professor in the Department of Anthropology, has been working on her book, Murder: The Social Life of Violent Death in Queer India.
“The timing of the McCain support was absolutely perfect; the fellowship allowed me to focus exclusively on this new research project. It was a ripe moment,” says Davé.
Ruth Ramsden-Karelse. Photo by Kemeisha McDonald.
“There is something very freeing about starting a new research project within an inherently interdisciplinary space like the Queer and Trans Research Lab,” she says. “The main thing in common is an orientation toward queer and trans studies, but that itself is really an orientation toward openness and expansiveness. It was really nice to start a new project within a space that was so open, so expansive, so capacious but also, of course, filled with incredibly sharp and interesting people.”
Ramsden-Karelse echoes Davé’s sentiments.
“I’m so happy to be doing this work at U of T,” she says. “Being a part of the Bonham Centre, in particular, is incredible. To be in a space where everyone’s working on queer and trans issues and there’s a shared set of political commitments is rare and important.”
Naisargi Davé.
The lab’s talented, dedicated people — including Dana Seitler, director of both lab and the Bonham Centre — are part of what inspired McCain to support it.
“Working with the ever-inspirational Dana Seitler and her impressive and dedicated team to bring their vision of the QTRL to life has been a great honour and I commend and congratulate each of them for their labour in keeping the QTRL a mainstay at the university,” McCain says.
Naisargi Davé.
Philanthropy is crucial to this important work, Seitler says, adding that it’s been spectacular to work with someone with both the capacity and will to support this kind of important grassroots community work.
“We at the Bonham Centre believe in social justice, and we believe in social change. We want to support 2SLGBTQ+ communities — and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” says Seitler. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to support our communities.”