Gendering the Royal Armouries
- Date: Wednesday 5 February 2025, 16:00 – 17:00
- Location: Fine Art Building SR (1.10)
- Cost: Free
Join us for a talk organised by the Centre for Jewish Studies, with speakers Rob Freeman and Kit Heyam.
In 2023, the Royal Armouries was proud to partner with Leeds 2023 on the project Forgotten Battles: Gender in the Armouries.
A team of volunteers and researchers from the Leeds area, who identify under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, created an exhibition and object trail aimed at showcasing diverse voices and previously hidden stories in the museum.
In this talk, Rob Freeman – Community Engagement Officer at the Royal Armouries – and Kit Heyam – who acted as Community Project Lead, and co-authored the ‘Gendering the Museum’ toolkit which inspired the project – will explore how the researchers and volunteers uncovered histories of gender and sexuality within the Royal Armouries collection, challenging the traditional white, masculine, heterosexual version of history.
About the speakers
Rob Freeman (He/him) has over 10 years of experience supporting local communities in the heritage sector, as a First World War Project Officer during the 14-18 centenary and now as the Community Engagement Officer at the Royal Armouries empowering local people to discover the nations collection of arms and armour.
Dr Kit Heyam (They/he) is a writer, researcher, heritage practitioner and trans awareness trainer. They are the author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (2022), which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction; and the co-author, with James Daybell (University of Plymouth), of Gendering the Museum: A Toolkit. They are currently an associate lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Surrey, and an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Fellow at the Royal Armouries.
More information
This seminar is organised by the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds.
It is free to attend and there is no need to book.
Please email Dr Roseanna Ramsden at R.Ramsden@leeds.ac.uk for more information.
Image
A tapestry artwork of women throughout history created by queer artist Alice Bigsby-Bye for the Forgotten Battles exhibition at the Royal Armouries, Leeds. Image courtesy of Royal Armouries.