 | Lucas Platero. Trans Politics and Radical Alliances Dr. Lucas Platero teaches Social Psychology (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) and is the director of the General University Series, at Bellaterra Publishing House. His academic journey is strongly linked to his activist life, gradually shifting his social activism to an activism based on academic research to which he has made multiple contributions. In 2020, Platero received the Emma Goldman Award, supporting innovative research and knowledge on feminist and inequality issues in Europe. Most recently and since 2022, Platero is leading the EU funded project ?Colorful Childhoods. Empowering LGBTIQ children in vulnerable contexts to combat gender-based violence across Europe? (Ref. 101049251/ CERV-2021-DAPHNE) at the URJC. |
 | Michal Pitoňák. Dynamic equilibrium of LGBT+ activism in Central and Eastern Europe: understanding Czech stalemate from a transnational perspective. Michal Pitoňák holds a Ph.D. in human geography from Charles University in Prague. In his dissertation, for the first time in Czech geography, he opened the subject of geographies of sexualities through the lens of his research on the spatiality and societal (de)construction of heteronormativity and its effect on the social organization and quality of life of non-heterosexuals. He received Prof. PhDr. Václav Příhoda award for the best graduates of Charles University. Currently, he works as a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (Klecany, Czechia), where he leads two research projects – one funded by the Czech Science Foundation focusing on a better understanding of minority stress and its effects on the Czech non-heterosexual population, and the second EU-funded project focusing on improvements in data collection and reporting of discrimination affecting LGBTQ+ people. He continues to publish and conducts research within the field of geographies of sexualities as an independent scholar. To promote the fields of geographies of sexualities and LGBTQ+ psychology, he founded an NGO called Queer Geography in 2017, which in September 2019 became the main organizer of V. European Geographies of Sexualities Conference in Prague. His most recent contribution to the field of geographies of sexualities is his involvement as a contributor to the development of the new book Mapping LGBTQ Spaces and Places. A Changing World. His background in human geography drives his motivations to study various links between the structural-individual scales that penetrate the barriers between diverse disciplinary thought. He is active in popularizing human sexuality studies and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in Czechia and beyond. https://www.michalpitonak.cz/en/cv/ |
 | PJ DiPietro. Trans of Color is an Oxymoron. Human, non-human animal, and infra-animal flesh. PJ DiPietro works at the intersection of decolonial feminisms, women of color thinking, Latinx studies, and trans* studies. With a transdisciplinary approach, they engage anthropology, human geography, and philosophy. They are one of the co-editors of Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones (SUNY 2019) and their single-author manuscript will be published under the title Sideways Selves, The Decolonizing Politics of Trans* Matter Across the Américas. They collaborate with various organizations and collectives committed to social justice, including the Democratizing Knowledge Collective at Syracuse University, the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS), the decolonial philosophy collaborative REC-Latinoamérica, and the travesti collectives Damas de Hierro and Futuro TransGenérico. DiPietro has received a Tinker Foundation Scholarship and an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities. https://thecollege.syr.edu/people/faculty/dipietro-pj/ |