Feminist and Queer Solidarities Beyond Borders is a research group which aims to bring together a network of academics and activists to work on women’s and LGBT rights within the Nordic countries, Russia and Turkey.
We aim to develop analytic and strategic tools to help with the struggle against gendered, sexualised, ethnicised and racialised inequalities that are currently on the rise in these regions and beyond.

We are funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Our multi-leveled discussions in this network, and the small working group on religion, feminism and LGBTI that I was part of, inspired me to initiate a more in-depth exploration of religiosities, gender and sexualities in a Swedish context.

While Sweden frequently is recognized as a secular and liberal country with a broad acceptance for same-sex relationships, contemporary research presents a contradictory situation for religious lgbtq+ people in this context. I am happy to share the news that the Swedish research council Forte granted my application for a research project to examine these contradictions by exploring religious and social barriers encountered by lgbtq+ people of faith across diverse religious traditions in Sweden.

In the fall 2022, I will together with a PhD-student start-up the 3-year project Liveability at the crossroad of religion, gender and sexuality. Towards the end of our collaborative work, we hope to illuminate the effects of internalized lgbtq+ negativity and heteronormativity, and identify what makes, and could make, spaces livable for lgbtq+ people of faith. The project will be a great continuation of the discussions in this network on the complexities that encircle diverse everyday experiences of religiosity, secularity, gender and sexuality, and I do hope to be able to share findings from the project with network partners in the future. 

- Mia Liinason