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Health has become a key focus for scholarship within the geographies of gender and sexualities. This progress report offers a schematic overview of the multiple ways in which the study of health (and especially disease and the lack of good health) has been studied in relation to such geographies. It explores the multiple ways in which an understanding of place has been operationalised, considers the potential importance still for large-scale quantitative studies, and highlights the importance of studies of health for broader debates and interests within the discipline. This progress report then concludes with some questions for future scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are a number of benefits to large‐scale, multi‐site, internationally funded urban research projects if they are operationalized in ways that acknowledge forms of knowledge incommensurability and allow for space to explore the commensurability of different forms of knowledge across different geographies. Such projects are especially important in the context of the precarity of research funding, as such projects can provide the space to explore new urban research avenues that may not have formed core components of the existing urban studies canon and may also bring with them significant and new funding possibilities. In this intervention I use the example of the GCRF‐funded PEAK Urban programme to consider how new urban research questions related to sexuality and health were brought to the fore during the life of the programme, which offer not only new research avenues, but also potential access to significant new funding sources. Programmes such as PEAK Urban therefore have the potential to build the long‐term resilience of urban research. Cutting funding to such programmes may therefore limit the efficacy of the programmes themselves and the long‐term sustainability of urban scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I set forth the case as to why scholarship on sexuality may wish to engage more directly with scholarship on urban informality especially as it relates to the urban South. Sexualities scholarship has long acknowledged an imbalance in the types of location researched, with the majority of studies having taken place in sites of relative privilege in the Global North. However, there has yet to be a sustained consideration as to the ways in which the particularities of the urban South – such as widespread urban informality – may offer important opportunities for sexualities scholars to engage more directly with locations beyond the Global North. In relation specifically to examples drawn from sub-Saharan Africa, in this article, I explore first the informal economic sector and examine the possibilities of considering the ways in which non-heteronormative sexualities may form a key but so far under-researched part of this sector. I then examine the ways in which scholarship can consider the particular strategic and pragmatic ways by which non-heteronormative groups and communities may be navigating informal built environments, not only to survive but also to potentially thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While today ubiquitous in HIV/AIDS policy and programming, the conceptual category of 'men who have sex with men' (MSM) has come under sustained critique as a result of its limited explanatory power and inability to engage with social, cultural and community complexity. This article examines how geographers may add substantively to such critical debates and extend them in new ways across sites in the global South where the category is often deployed. It does this by considering the importance of place, varying local and international imperatives for the category, and implications of considering socio-spatial liminality to conceptualise men's experiences of HIV programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant opportunities exist to connect more directly sexuality research to urbanisation research in the global South. This article considers such connections in relation to the informal sector, the state, and urban health. It highlights how such connections can help surface the strategic and pragmatic choices made by same-sex communities in the face of persistent urban challenges in the global South. The article draws on examples from sub-Saharan Africa, a region that exhibits significant sexuality-based discrimination and which has had significant urban research attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much work has recently explored the remarkable legislative achievements that have benefited queer groups in South Africa. Less well understood has been an appreciation as to how the links between histories of racism and histories of sexuality deployed to legitimate such legal challenges may also have directly helped to entrench the ability of others to argue against queer rights. Drawing on the work of Stuart Hall, this article will explore how queer activist's association with an ideology of 'equality' (and the link between racism and sexuality-based discrimination) has not simply concluded discussion about the rights (or wrongs) of queer rights. Instead that association has helped align the issue of sexuality within a far broader debate as to what the 'New South Africa' should mean after a racist past. This may help us appreciate a so far little understood and yet key reason why homophobia remains such a pervasive problem in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant opportunities exist to examine new ways of approaching geographies of sexualities in the Global South. This article argues a key way to consider this is via a systematic evaluation of diverse impacts in the Global South of very different internationally-driven processes designed to address local LGBT needs. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and drawing on and reviewing a range of disciplinary perspectives, this article offers a conceptualization and series of future research questions regarding the relational and diverse impacts of different internationally-driven processes. These concerns support existing geographies of sexualities interests including the interfaces between sexuality, intersectionality and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any analysis of South African gendered performances, identities and inequalities confront past and present experiences of and struggles with race, colonialism, post-colonial development and sexuality. These tensions shape gendered geographical work, highlighting the importance of histories of race, class, and sexuality, as well as the ways in which gender itself can be approached as an analytical category and epistemic framing in South Africa. In this paper we focus on two avenues that have engaged scholars since the end of apartheid, namely: gender and development; and gender and geographies of sexualities. The former articulates the particular ways that the historical spatially exclusionary trajectory of the country has impacted especially on women and their ability to engage with state and national building projects post-apartheid. The latter explores how South African geographies (despite the country's progressive post-apartheid constitution with regard to LGBT rights) continue to reflect and (at times) enable spatial segregation and inequalities related to gender. A key strength of research in South African gender scholarship is that it complicates and challenges how we might approach gender and gender-based inequalities, and the diverse ways in which gender categories and framings can be imagined, deployed and troubled in post-colonial states and cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While work on solidarities forms a core element within geographical scholarship, especially as related to forms of shared connection to address forms of inequality, few studies from the geographies of sexualities literature have directly engaged with the concept. This article argues that there are two complementary logics as to why scholars working on sexuality may want to consider more forcibly the concept of solidarity. One of these logics suggests that a focus on solidarities can further pre-existing key interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, especially in parts of the world that have historically received relatively limited research attention. A second logic suggests that a focus on sexuality-based solidarities can help enable sexualities scholars to further critical engagement regarding broader discourses, and offer alternative framings, regarding a world in transition. This article presents a series of examples, drawn from across sub-Saharan Africa, related to both logics together with a series of potential future directions for research. Taken collectively, this article, by drawing on earlier work on solidarity from within the discipline of geography, contends that there are a number of key benefits for sexualities scholars to undertake a ‘pivot’ or choice to explore solidarity more directly in the current moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much work has recently explored the remarkable legislative achievements that have benefited queer groups in South Africa. Less well understood has been an appreciation as to how the links between histories of racism and histories of sexuality deployed to legitimate such legal challenges may also have directly helped to entrench the ability of others to argue against queer rights. Drawing on the work of Stuart Hall, this article will explore how queer activist's association with an ideology of 'equality' (and the link between racism and sexuality-based discrimination) has not simply concluded discussion about the rights (or wrongs) of queer rights. Instead that association has helped align the issue of sexuality within a far broader debate as to what the 'New South Africa' should mean after a racist past. This may help us appreciate a so far little understood and yet key reason why homophobia remains such a pervasive problem in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]