Dr. S.M. Rodriguez is scholar-activist and Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights and Human Rights. Their research advances the understanding of the impact of racialisation, criminalisation, ableism, and the imposition of gendered and sexual control on people of African descent. With a monograph and over a dozen journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Rodriguez’s work has had a profound impact on scholarship, legal proceedings, and organizational practices.
In their first monograph, The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda (2019), Dr Rodriguez analysed the effects of transnational advocacy on Ugandan LGBTI (kuchu) organising during the four-year period in which the Ugandan government considered the “Kill the Gays Bill”. The work used interviews, ethnography, and an analysis of fourteen years of Ugandan parliamentary records to examine the complicated impact of transnational financing on antigay ideologies, gay rights movement-making, and legislating morality.
Dr. Rodriguez’s current research centres two tracks. The first explores the globalisation of abolitionist feminist praxis. They are currently writing a monograph that explores the intersections of anti-slavery, anti-imperial, and anti-violence movements across Africa, the Caribbean, and their diasporas in the US and UK. In another research track, Dr Rodriguez examines the political processes involved in or countering gender and sexual identification. Work in this area includes the Nonbinary Identity Project and collaborations that address the relationship between surveillance, regulation, and gender expansive identity formation.
In addition to their research endeavours, Dr Rodriguez has launched two major initiatives: Black Queer Movements, the global knowledge-exchange hub for LGBTIQ activists of African descent, and a UK higher education racial equity project, called The Black Professors Pipeline.
Research Member of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology
Member of the PhD Supervisory team of Ting-Sian Liu.