Alex speaks on queer and radical history.
They run tailored historical events for a wide range of audiences. Drawing on a research background and a passion for queer history, especially of the Georgian era, Alex’s events educate and entertain.
Alex gives broad introductions to queer Georgian history, as well as specific talks on topics including ‘sapphick’ Georgians, trans history, and bad gays. They run intimate literary soirées and workshops, working in-person and online. With Seedlings, they run bimonthly walks through London’s queer, radical and ecological histories.
They also help organisations to design bespoke LGBTQ+ History Month events and Pride celebrations. As Creative Director of the Poetry Lab at A Queer Georgian Social Season, for instance, they’ve run literary soirées in the period setting of Burgh House.
Get in touch to commission Alex’s work – it would be a joy to work together!
Portfolio
Seedlings Rambles
A bimonthly series of walks with Seedlings.
With Seedlings, I run a series of free walks through London’s queer, radical and ecological histories. The Rambles take audiences through an hour and a half of gender-swapping, community organising and rewilding.
They introduce an audience mainly consisting of young queer Londoners to the flourishing nature and ancestry that surround us, and aim to build community and solidarity.
Being Trans in Regency London
A talk in 2025 for TransMuted.
I took the audience back to Regency London, to meet two very different trans ancestors.
The Chevalièr·e d’Eon came to London as a French spy. Soon, she transitioned, became a professional fencer, and forced Louis XVI to give her Europe’s first gender recognition certificate. William Brown lived under the radar. A Black transmasc sailor in the Royal Navy, he shows us a working-class trans life in an imperial era — precarious, ambivalent, real.
A Queer Georgian Poetry Lab
An evening in 2023, part of A Queer Georgian Social Season at Burgh House.
An intimate soirée of queer Georgian writing, where I introduced the eighteenth century’s most lively – and troubling – queer writers. Readings included sapphic sonnets and ballads about transmasc sailors, accompanied by live flute music. We finished with a poem-writing parlour game, based on the literary salons of 1770s Bath.
Locking Away Queer National Treasures
A talk in 2024 for Queer Intersections Oxford, a research network of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
A presentation of my research on the Ladies of Llangollen, a sapphick couple in eighteenth-century rural Wales. I told the stories of their lives, how they inspired queers like Lord Byron and Simone de Beauvoir, and how the Ladies’ extraordinary journals have been kept hidden from the public for centuries.
How Bi-Erasure Limits Queer Studies
A talk in 2024, at the International Bisexuality Research Conference.
This paper drew on my research on the bi+ Georgian poet Anna Seward, alongside my own experiences as a bi scholar. I showed that bi-erasure is all too common in queer studies. But – I argued – if we take a few simple steps to overcome it, we might broaden the field’s appeal and ambition.
Bisexuality and Comedy’s Gender Play
A talk in 2022, at the International Bisexuality Research Conference.
My musings on Cary Grant in a fluffy dressing gown. Grant’s androgynous star power, I argued, is part of a long history of bi+ gender play in comedies, dating back at least as far as Shakespeare. It resonates with – and inspires – the playful, fluid bi+ culture of today.
Images courtesy of Seedlings; TransMuted; Ciaran Duncan; Sieve Bonaiuti; International Bisexuality Research Conference.
Alex Haydn-Williams 