LGBT Asylum Seekers

Join us for this fascinating event to explore the complex issues faced by LGBT Asylum Seekers from two different perspectives. Nicola Mai and Clare Summerskill will each talk about recent projects, the short film “Samira” and the verbatim play “Rights of Passage”, with a drinks reception in between.

Nicola Mai is a sociologist, an ethnographer and a filmmaker working as Professor of Sociology and Migration Studies at Kingston University London. His academic writing and films focus on the experiences and representations of migrants working in the global sex industry. Through experimental documentaries and original research findings, Nicola challenges prevailing humanitarian representations of the relationship between  migration and sex work in terms of trafficking, while analyzing sex workers'  complex experiences and understandings of exploitation and agency.

Clare Summerskill is a playwright, a singer-songwriter and a lesbian comedienne. Clare regularly performs her own one-woman comedy shows and tours them to theatres internationally. She also has written and produced several plays and films in the verbatim theatre style, where the script is created entirely from interviews. Her published works include Hearing Voices, a play based on service users’ experiences of the mental health system, Rights of Passage, which addresses issues around LGBT asylum seekers, and Gateway to Heaven – Fifty Years of Lesbian and Gay Oral History. She is currently working on her doctorate on verbatim theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.