The Institute

Our Mission

The University of Arizona LGBTQ+ Institute promotes LGBTQ+ research, curricula and public programming.

Our History

The Institute was founded as The Committee on Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Studies at the University of Arizona in 1993. Its formation was inspired by a visit from feminist scientist Donna Haraway (Rockefeller Humanities Resident Scholar). From its inception, the Institute has been dedicated to interdisciplinary intellectual community development. The Committee was formally re-established as the UA Institute for LGBT Studies on Oct 11, 2007. In August 2023, we officially relaunched as the UA LGBTQ+ Institute.

Faculty leadership at the Institute has come from Gender and Women's Studies, History, Media Arts, Education, and Public Health. Executive Committee members have been drawn from all four main campus colleges (including faculty in the departments of English, French and Italian, Anthropology, Art, Geography & Regional Development, Political Science, Sociology, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and Art History), as well as the College of Medicine-Tucson Department of Family & Community Medicine. 

Our faculty and students have worked closely with a variety of departments (including Geography & Regional Development, Anthropology and Mexican American Studies) on a project-specific basis, and we have undertaken several curriculum and programming projects with health and life sciences.