Location matters: identifying and measuring space-based inequalities for LGBT+ people

Organisers: Dr Stef Garasto (s.garasto@gre.ac.uk) & Dr Jia Wang (j.wang@gre.ac.uk). School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich

Guest speakers: Dr PJ Annand, University of Surrey & Yijing Li, King's College London.

When and where: 12th September 2023, 2-5pm, Room 1.05 Maurice Keyworth Building, Leeds university, GIScience conference.

Updated on: 08/09/2023

Call for Participation

This workshop brings together GIS community, social scientists and anyone interested in tackling location-based inequalities faced by minority groups, particularly LGBTQ+ people. We aim to incorporate narratives from the lived experience of LGBTQ+ people, to identify key factors and highlight the nuances behind people’s choices, with large datasets (e.g. Census 2021) that could help us measure the economic and social cost of where LGBTQ+ people live.

The objectives of this workshop are to:

• raise consciousness about the disparities and challenges the community encounter in accessing and navigating physical spaces.
• learn what a participatory and co-produced approach to research is and why it is essential to do research with communities rather than “on” them.
• explore and exchange both established and innovative methods that have been utilised in existing research to address social and spatial inequalities within the context of the AI and big data era. How do these methods interact with a participatory approach to research?
• begin the development of a formal framework to represent the set of factors that shape LGBTQ+ people’s choices of where to live.
• propose reliable datasets and inclusive research designs to address specific spatial inequalities faced by minority groups (hate crime data, availability of inclusive healthcare facilities, housing data…).

We welcome contributions in any area related to the social and spatial inequality utilising GIS tools or Big Spatial Data, as well as research that reflects on and seeks to inform policymaking. The workshop will combine talks and group discussions.

What can this workshop offer you?

• Networking with like-minded people, working on research that addresses and combats social inequalities.
• Increased knowledge of research questions and methods to address spatial inequalities.
• Increased knowledge of participatory and co-produced research approaches.
• Increased knowledge of the current state of LGBTQ+ data in the UK and challenges faced by the community.

Programme and timeline

(All information is available in the pdf in the repo, as well.)

The workshop will be structured as follows:

1. Introduction from the organisers (10 minutes)
2. Invited Talk: "Urban Accessibility - from Whose shoes?", Yijing Li, King's College London (20 minutes (15+5))
3. Invited Talk: "Introduction to participatory methods", PJ Annand, King's College London (10 minutes (5+5))
4. Participant introduction: current research highlight and motivation to join the workshop. (20 minutes)
5. Coffee break (10 minutes)
6. Activity 1 – Identify influential factors and realise a conceptual framework.
   • First, there will be a guided group discussions on framework’s factors (25 minutes):
     • Participants will be split into groups of 3-5.
     • Using fictitious “personas” as a starting point, they will discuss potential factors that might impact on housing decision for each persona.
     • The personas used, while using LGBT+ experiences as the starting point, will incorporate a wide range of intersectional identities.
     • Factors will be written on post-it notes and collected for the next stage.
   • Then, there will be review and clustering of factors (25 minutes):
     • Participants will join a plenary discussion to review the factors identified during the previous discussion.
     • A complete set of factors will be classified, and their relationships will be identified (as an ontology). A conceptual framework will be proposed as the outcome of Activity 1.
7. Coffee break (15 minutes)
8. Activity 2 – Identify available and missing datasets and suggest possible methods and tools for analysis and visualisation (45 minutes).
   • Regarding the factors from Activity 1, guided group discussion will be held on available and missing datasets.
   • The factors identified above will be split across groups for discussion.
   • Discussion on relevant GIS methods and tools for missing data, formal representation, data analytics and modelling, visualisation and prediction. Reflections on how to adapt these methods for co-produced inquiry.

Total duration = 3 hours