Connall Maclennan

Postgraduate Research Student

The Church and the Formation of Queer Identity, Community, and Politics in the State of Georgia, 1945-2015

Supervisors:

Dr Josh Hollands and Professor Jonathan Bell

My PhD research seeks to investigate the ways in which Christianity shaped identity and community amongst queer people in the state of Georgia in the years between the end of WWII and the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court decision. It explores the importance of gay affirming religious bodies in fostering queer community and identity within Georgia and analyses the ways in which established Christian institutions acted as spaces of community and kinship for queer people, while also being sites of oppression. I will explore how these groups provided sites of community and comfort, while at times also reinforcing heteronormative and racist barriers that limited who benefitted from them. This PhD seeks to answer the question: in what ways did Christian religion shape queer identity and community in Georgia? 

Awards | Grants | Scholarships | Funding

  • 2025: Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities (funding for doctoral research).
  • 2024: Sara Norton Research Fund, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

Conference presentations and talks

  • “Get Thee to a Big (Southern) City: Understanding Queer Community Formation and its Limits Through Migration to 1970s Atlanta”, Invisible Histories 2026 Queer History South Digital Conference (Forthcoming)
  • “Squeezing the Orange Juice Queen: The Gay Boycott of Anita Bryant’s Florida Citrus Products and the Creation of National Queer Activism,” Scottish Association for the Study of America 2023 Annual Conference
Picture of Connall Maclennan

E-mail: 
BlueSky: connallmaclennan.bsky.social 
X: @connall_mac1 connall.maclennan.25@ucl.ac.uk

Education

 

  • 2025: MPhil in American History, University of Cambridge
  • 2023: MA(Hons) in History and Politics, University of Edinburgh