LGBT+ History Month 2025

February is LGBT+ History Month and this year’s theme is Activism and Social Change. Find out more from the official website.

To celebrate, we have displays and celebrations across our campuses, both in the library and beyond. Please check out ARU’s upcoming events. Among the events is a book launch for The Guide to LGBTQ+ Research by Catherine Lee and Adam Brett. If you’d like to read the book, you can find a copy in our collection.

Dive into our wide range of library resources about LBGT+ lives, research and history, through our themed collection. (If you’d like to see what other themed collections we have, here’s the landing page: arul.ink/themed)

Here are some LGBT+ history highlights to whet your appetite…

Prejudice and Pride: LGBT Activist stories from Manchester and Beyond, edited by Devlin, Clíodhna

An on theme pick for this year. This book collects together stories of LGBT activists centred around Manchester from 1960s to 2000s. Part of a project to record the stories of individuals undertaken by LGBT Youth North West. The book also explores methods for collecting activists histories through youth work and reflects on the nature of individual accounts of history.

Available as an eBook. Library catalogue link.

LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives by Simon Joyce

Simon Joyce explores the lives of LGBT Victorians and charts the birth of modern terminology and classification around sexuality and gender, providing historical context to modern LGBT+ discourses.

Available as an eBook and physical book. Library catalogue link.

Reeling in the Queers: Tales of Ireland’s LGBTQ Past by Páraic Kerrigan

Páraic Kerrigan recounts remarkable acts by ordinary people in Ireland’s queer history, collecting together both joyful and painful events in Ireland’s LGBTQ past.

Available as an eBook and physical book. Library catalogue link.

Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History by Simon Goldhill

A multi-generational exploration of Cambridge University’s gay community, using personal archival materials such as diaries and letters to reveal a thriving queer community at the heart of the establishment and explore their impact on British culture.

Available as an eBook and physical book. Library catalogue link.

Find many more LGBT+ history resources in our collection, both online and on campus. If you find something you like at another campus, put in a request and we’ll send it over.