Interdisciplinary Rhetoric, Disciplinary Silos: Mapping Queer Scholarship on Crises, Disasters, Peace, and Conflict

An emerging queer focus in Crisis and Disaster Research and Peace and Conflict Research has highlighted the historical exclusion of sexual and gender minorities from research and policy on conflict, crisis, and disaster management. Yet, despite growing efforts to highlight queer vulnerabilities and to stress interdisciplinarity in a world experiencing ever more complex crises, the two fields remain weakly connected in queer-focused research, creating a queer knowledge gap that potentially (re)produces policy blind spots in prevention, response, and recovery. This motivates and calls for greater interdisciplinary efforts to advance queer-sensitive research agendas and inclusive conflict, crisis, and disaster management policy. This article examines the fields' interconnectedness in queer-focused research and identifies areas for further conceptual and thematic bridging. To achieve this, 1,145 queer-focused publications were mapped and analyzed using citation network analysis, word frequency analysis, and computer-assisted thematic keyword-in-context analysis. The results show that cross-citation between the fields is minimal. However, the lexical and thematic analyses identify conceptual and thematic overlaps, particularly regarding gender, groups, rights, and sexuality. The findings show how disciplinary silos persist despite shared analytical and empirical concerns and reproduce blind spots affecting sexual and gender minorities during conflicts, crises, and disasters.