[CCCU/INCISE press release 16 May 2016]

Canterbury Christ Church University will next month sponsor the Seventh Queering Paradigms conference on Grand Cayman.

The conference, co-organised by Christ Church academics and local Human Rights activists, addresses the social injustices faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer/Questioning (LGBTIQ) people in the Caribbean on the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands and the wider region.

Queering Paradigms (QP) founder and Director of the University’s INCISE research centre Professor Bee Scherer said: Local activists approached us last year at the QP6 conference in Canterbury with the view to bringing QP to the Caribbean region.  We have invited the Rt Rvd Dr Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, as a keynoter speaker and he will share the UK experience with legislative change around same-sex marriage and make some theological reflections about the queering project of Jesus.

Visiting Senior Research Fellow at INCISE Barrister Dr Leonardo Raznovich, who is in a same-sex marriage to a Caymanian resident, is co-ordinating the conference on Grand Caymans.

“I am currently challenging the Caymanian government in court about their refusal to grant me residency based on my same-sex marital status. I have the full support of the Governor; unfortunately the Foreign office has been less supportive. The conference highlights the societal and legal plights of LGBTIQ citizens in the Caribbean. We hope to aid the end of discrimination and bring the legal situation on the Caymans in line with EU and UK law.”

Other conference highlights include a keynote by Professor Emeritus Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni, Justice of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, and a presentation by Jamaican Human Rights activist Maurice Tomlinson.