“On the edge of sustainable”: LGBTQ+ researchers’ experiences of harm, fear, and community

Those who research LGBTQ+ issues find themselves at the intersection of multiple pressures, including conservative research cultures, public backlash, and intensive workloads. This paper explores the experiences of LGBTQ+ researchers in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) through a qualitative focus group study. Four focus groups demonstrate that LGBTQ+ researchers experience specific barriers and challenges due to their research topic and the currently hostile political climate. We argue that the harm, fear, and (lack of) community that LGBTQ+ researchers experience can be interpreted through Ahmed’s (2014) conceptualisation of stickiness, whereby queerness holds many contradictory meanings beyond its practice. This queer stickiness impacts LGBTQ+ researchers’ careers, resulting in a challenging and stressful balance of duties and self-management in neoliberal HEIs. This article develops conceptualisations of stickiness, understandings of UK research culture and pressures, and indicates the challenges of working in commercialised neoliberal HEIs. We conclude with some suggestions on how universities could better support the researchers putting themselves at risk to benefit their research cultures.