A Queer Panel—Part I: Exploring Transnational 2SLGBTQ+ Migration Journeys

Arnaud Baudry is Executive Director of the Toronto-based organization, FrancoQueer. He has extensive experience in the digital media industry in both France and Canada. Baudry is a community leader who serves the French-speaking LGBTQIA+ community in the region of Toronto and in Ontario.

Ali Bhagat is Assistant Professor and Director of the Minor in Public Policy at Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver Campus. His research explores refugee/migration policy and racial equity across Europe, Africa, and North America. His book, Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell University Press, 2024), examines urban refugee survival in Paris and Nairobi.

An international political economist, Bhagat investigates intersections of race, class, and sexuality, with a focus on LGBTQ+ refugees. Using qualitative methods like interviews and ethnography, he has published in journals including Review of International Political Economy and Antipode. Bhagat leads the SSHRC-funded project Mapping Queer African Refugee Lifepaths, studying refugee mobilities and community-building in Canada and South Africa. He is co-investigator in the Re: Structure Lab and on a Worker-Driven Social Responsibility project. Previously, he held academic roles at the University of Manchester and Saint Mary’s University.

Carlo Handy Charles is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Affiliate at the Black Scholars Institute at the University of Windsor. He is also a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and a Research Fellow at the CNRS French Collaborative Institute on Migrations in Paris. His research explores the intersection of international migration, race, sexualities, and socioeconomic inequalities among migrants and nonmigrants in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. His current book project examines the meanings and impacts of queer transnational relationships on Haiti and its diaspora.

Craig Jennex is an Assistant Professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University and a scholar of LGBTQ2+ culture and politics, queer and feminist theory, and popular music studies. He is currently writing a book on the role of popular music (with particular attention to disco and womyn’s music) in the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Canada. He is co-author (with Nisha Eswaran) of Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada (2020) and co-editor (with Susan Fast) of Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions (Routledge 2019). He has also published extensively in academic journals. Craig Jennex holds a PhD in English and Cultural Studies, a PhD Diploma in Gender Studies and Feminist Research and an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University and a BA in Music from Dalhousie University. He has previously taught at McMaster University, where he won the McMaster Students Union Excellence in Teaching Award, the University of Regina, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Dalhousie University.

David A.B. Murray drawings on theoretical interests in culture, nationalism, colonialism, representation, performance and queer theory, Professor Murray has conducted fieldwork in Martinique, Barbados, New Zealand and Canada examining sexual and gender minorities and their relations to local, national and transnational social, political, economic and health inequities.

Professor Murray’s monographs include "Opacity: Gender, Sexuality, Race and the Problem of Identity in Martinique" (Peter Lang 2002), "Flaming Souls: Homosexuality, Homophobia and Social Change in Barbados", (University of Toronto Press, 2012) and "Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). He has edited several volumes. His most recent publication is the introductory textbook "Queer Anthropology" (2025) part of University of Toronto Press’s Anthropological Insights Series.

Elif Sari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores transnational sexualities, migration, asylum, waiting, humanitarianism, and queer and critical race theory, with a particular focus on the Middle East and its diasporas. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University, with a concentration in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Before joining UBC, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Queer and Trans Research Lab at the University of Toronto. Elif is currently completing her first book manuscript—an ethnography of LGBTQ+ asylum from the Middle East to North America, centered on the experiences of Iranian queer and trans refugees waiting in Turkey. She is also excited to launch two new research projects: one on private refugee sponsorship programs in Canada and another examining the intersections of migration, sexuality, and art (particularly drag).