ASU graduate students with a common interest in queer research founded InQUEERy, which began as a research collaborative focused on the demographics of the LGBTQ community, in 2013.
It's since become an interdisciplinary group including students, faculty and community members. However, its mission is still in development, said nutrition and wellness doctoral student and co-chair Jane Hurley.
“It’s still kind of new in that sense and still kind of developing a sense of itself,” she said. “It’s a group of people who want to move forward with researching people of different genders and identities that are typically non-traditional.”
Hurley said her interest stems from the topic’s unique perspective.
“It’s an area that’s very new and something that’s not been mainstream at all — it’s still comparatively underground,” she said. “I feel that the group can accomplish sort of an enduring collaboration among those interested in queer research and move forward.”
ASU is a prime location for queer research, said InQUEERy co-chair and social work graduate student Vern Harner.
“We are a high-research university, so this is really an opportunity for us to start making a name for ourselves as doing something that you don’t see in other universities or colleges,” they said.
The group also hopes to network those interested in queer research, Harner said.
“We are really hoping to strengthen the community around queer and LGBT community research because it’s been really disconnected,” they said. “We’re also hoping to raise consciousness at ASU and other organizations in the community about the importance of this research.”
Natasha Mendoza, a social work faculty member involved in InQUEERy, said even though the group originated from the ASU community, it is not an official club.
“It’s important for us to not be in an ivory tower type of operative,” she said. “We really want the community to be involved and to put it under the label of an official student club would make it so folks would think they’re not invited.”
Instead, Mendoza said the group’s focus is to develop proper queer research etiquette.
“People who are doing queer research aren’t fully aware of how to do it correctly, like collecting demographics,” she said. “What we have done is sort of create a little brown bag about how to collect queer demographics, which can be really useful for people who want to...collect it as part of their work.”
The group’s specific interest in queer demographics is one of the first of its kind, Mendoza said.
“This is kind of a different animal,” she said. “It’s a collaborative between people who are interested in the scholarship of the ASU setting and those who are interested in the scholarship of the community. ... I just don’t know of anything quite like it.”
InQUEERy meets at 4:30 p.m. on the third Monday of the every month.
Reach the reporter at aplante@asu.edu or follow @aimeenplante on Twitter.
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