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Celebrating Trans Day of Visibility 2023 at UCL

30 March 2023

31 March marks Trans Day of Visibility. Explore our range of recordings, articles and key resources including networks and support, with a foreword from the Chair of UCL's Trans Network and Co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group.

The trans flag flying on UCL's Portico building

Foreword from Dr Sebastian Groh, Chair of Trans Network, Co-chair of LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group

Trans Day of Visibility was founded in 2009 in order to celebrate the many wonderful members of the transgender community and raise awareness of the issues affecting us. In a society where our existence has increasingly become reduced to a philosophical debate and a tool to divide LGBT+ people in order to weaken the entire community, it is all the more important to show that we are still here and living our lives. Not an abstract notion or idea whose rights can be debated as intellectual exercise, but a group of real human beings with real emotions, struggles, and joy, just like everybody else.

Transgender people have always existed, throughout history – and what a wild and colourful history it is, enriched by our identities and so many others! TDOV allows us to appreciate who we are, in all our diversity, often intersecting with many other minority identities. It’s this diversity that makes us strong, a diversity that we should strive to protect and champion in all areas of life. When celebrating TDOV, it is important to remember that not everybody can or will be able to be visible on this day – but visible or not, know that you are still loved and appreciated by all of us. And, most importantly, that you are not alone.

Dr Sebastian Groh, Chair of UCL's Trans Network, Co-chair of LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group

Trans perspectives from UCL

Events, recordings and articles for Trans Day of Visibility

  • Catch up with the recording of Queer Utopias in Higher Education and Beyond, held during LGBT+ History Month 2023 by UCL and City University.
  • Inclusive Spaces: Trans Visibility and the City: A recording of this event, timed to co-incide with Trans Day of Visibility, exploring trans people’s experiences of in/visibility in urban spaces and city life, and the contradictions that can make them simultaneously hyper-visible and hyper-vulnerable.
  • An article on sex, gender and marriage from UCL’s Dr Rory Phillips which explores how the theories of 18th century philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, are inclusive of transgender and gender non-conforming identities.
  • If you missed last year's Trans Lives at UCL exhibition in the Cloisters, the displays are now available to download as a PDF [please note, we are working on a screen-reader friendly document to accompany this and and this will be uploaded shortly]. An updated 'further reading' list to support the exhibition can be found here.

Networks and resources

Image credit: Emily Wang