Event cancelled - The Lesbians and Policing Project: Police monitoring in defence of dangerous lesbian-ness in 1980s London
Dr Helen Monk, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Liverpool John Moores University
Notes & Changes
The event has been switched to an online only event. Teams meeting link will be circulated the morning of the event.
The event may be recorded, in which case your face and/or voice may appear in the footage. This footage might be used on public social media. If you prefer not to be recorded, please sit outside the recording area and wait for the recording to be turned off before asking questions.
Abstract
This paper presents findings from a case study into The Lesbians and Policing Project [LesPop], a police monitoring organisation that existed in London between 1984 and 1990. Drawing on archives held at Glasgow Women’s Library, the presentation reviews the activities of LesPop and outlines its aims, intentions and philosophies in an era of state-sanctioned homophobia. It will consider both its origins and its demise in the political context of Britain in the 1980s and seeks to discuss what the organisation reveals about both queer experiences of policing and the response provided by LGBTQ+ people in this period. Our work argues that as a case study, LesPop provides an important, and hitherto unexamined, contribution to lesbian history as well as the histories of policing and police monitoring in Britain.
BIO
Dr Helen Monk is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University and former Co-Director (with Professor Joe Sim) of the Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion. Her research interests include women’s experiences of violence and injustice, and feminist theory. She is widely published in academic journals, such as Feminist Review, and is Co-Editor of Feminist Responses to Injustices of the State and its Institutions (Bristol University Press, 2024).