Putting queer history on the map

An introduction to Professor Matt Cook, Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities

Jane Waghorn Head of Communications

In June 2023, Mansfield announced the UK’s first permanently endowed Professorship in LGBTQ+ History, in association with the Faculty of History. The renowned historian, Professor Matt Cook, became the first Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities when he officially joined the College at the start of Michaelmas term 2023, but the announcement of his appointment had already prompted almost blanket coverage in the UK national media, and was also picked up overseas.

Made possible by a £4.9m gift to Mansfield from the Arcadia Fund, the Professorship was named in honour of Jonathan Cooper OBE, who passed away in 2021. Jonathan was an inspiring human rights lawyer, tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and commentator on issues such as trans rights, conversion therapy and the rights of people living with HIV.

Matt, who was previously Professor of Modern History and Director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre at Birkbeck, University of London, specialises in queer history in the 19th and 20th centuries and is the author of London and the Culture of Homosexuality (2003), Queer Domesticities (2014) and Queer Beyond London (2022). He has worked extensively with the museum, archive, and heritage sectors on issues of LGBTQ representation and is an editor of History Workshop Journal.

We asked Matt why this headline-grabbing appointment is so important. ’I think the Jonathan Cooper Professorship really puts queer history on the map and shows that it matters. It is an opportunity, not for me to have a platform, but to foster the very diverse historical and interdisciplinary conversations that are happening within, and across the UK, and globally in this field. It offers a real chance to bring those voices together, to have those debates and to flag this thread in historical debate, give it some prominence and show its significance – not just to a minority of people, but as part of the heft of historical inquiry.’

Matt is currently putting the finishing touches to his new book Writing queer history, part of the Bloomsbury series, scheduled for publication in autumn 2024 to coincide with his Inaugural Lecture at the University. He has also been busy planning his teaching at Mansfield, starting with peppering the History curriculum with guest lectures and seminars. Come the 2024/25 academic year at Mansfield, Matt will be running his own undergraduate and postgraduate modules on queer history.

To mark World Aids Day on 1 December 2023, Matt delivered his first public talk at Mansfield: ‘Archives of feeling revisited’, offering a topical take on his research on a key turning point in the history of the AIDS crisis in Britain. Drawing on government papers, film, music, and a wide array of testimonies, Matt explored the feelings at stake in the epidemic, how they related to press and politics, how they shaped everyday lives, and how they played out for those dealing most directly with the escalating crisis.

’I believe it is important to ask ourselves: “how can we think about emotions in the past to inform the present?” Here we are again, amid new culture wars on trans issues, Islamophobia and the refugee crises, and we need to ask: “what can we learn from this prior moment of fear and what damage occurs when that fear is mobilised?”

‘Such “archives of feeling” are fundamental to our understanding of social and intimate lives – past and present. It is by returning to such moments of emotional complexity that we may be able to see more clearly the dangers which threaten us now.’

June 2024 will also see the first of what Matt hopes will be an annual week-long event at Mansfield, celebrating and raising the profile of queer history, and opening important conversations with the next generation of queer and trans historians.

Together with the Faculty of History, Mansfield is seeking to build on the great generosity of Arcadia. We hope to attract further philanthropic support to create a new research cluster in LGBTQ+ history at Oxford, including graduate scholarships and a new Career Development Fellowship.

Already making his indelible mark on Mansfield, Matt has ambitious hopes for the future. ’I want to embed queer history teaching in our curriculum and create a public-facing research culture which will cement Mansfield and Oxford’s national and international reputation for work in this vibrant, creative field.’