Strathclyde has a proud and long-established LGBT+ community, including staff, students and alumni who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, or intersex. To date, however, very little research has been conducted into this aspect of the University’s history. In August 2023, Alex Kabaj, Graduate Intern at the University’s Equality and Diversity Office, began a project to look through primary sources held in our Archives and gather evidence to fill this significant gap in Strathclyde’s institutional story.
One of the most useful sources for Alex’s project is the Strathclyde Telegraph student newspaper, produced by the Students' Association from 1960 to the present. This offers a wealth of information about the academic, political and social activities of students, including the establishment of a Gay Society (Gaysoc) at Strathclyde in 1971 and the launch of the Strathclyde University Gay Rights Campaign in 1975. Alex is currently searching through all our back copies of the Telegraph, which is a fascinating, but time-consuming task. So, last month, we organised a crowdsourcing event for our Library colleagues to come and lend him a helping hand.
After an introductory presentation in which Alex spoke about his project and highlighted his initial findings, staff participated in a supervised research session in the Archives and Special Collections reading room. Getting ‘hands on’ with our collections, they searched through original copies of the Strathclyde Telegraph from 1983 and 1984 and noted down any references found to LGBT+ issues, which Alex could then follow up.
The crowdsourcing session was very successful, with the participants collectively working through 16 issues of the newspaper and saving Alex approximately 16 hours’ research time. Staff who signed up for the session also enjoyed the opportunity to directly support Alex’s research: as one commented, ‘it was great to feel of use to such an important project.’ We plan to arrange more crowdsourcing sessions over the summer, and to highlight further findings from Alex’s project towards the end of this year. In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about Alex’s research, please contact him at alex.kabaj@strath.ac.uk.
Archive reference: OJD/1 Strathclyde Telegraph
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