Hybrid Seminar – Non-binary Lives
Monday 16 November 2026, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm GMT, online and London, UK
LSE Gender is delighted to welcome Marquis Bey and distinguished journalist Sandip Roy, who will offer international perspectives on nonbinary lived experiences through their respective new books Nonbinary Life: An Autotheory and Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal.
Bey’s Nonbinary Life blends memoir and theory to provide a philosophical meditation on what it means to live beyond the binary. Roy’s Chapal Rani is a biography of Bhaduri, Bengal’s last ‘female impersonator’ from the jatra tradition. In conversation with SM Rodriguez, the authors discuss the importance of bridging creativity and interdisciplinarity to address important questions of gender expansive histories and futures.
Meet our speakers and chair:
Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. Bey’s work, broadly speaking, concerns Black Feminist Theorizing, Transgender and Nonbinary Studies, Critical Theory, and abolition. They are currently at work on a scholarly essay collection on “jailbreaking” gender and race tentatively titled Rogue Cinders: Jailbreaking Gender, Jailbreaking Race.
Sandip Roy is a writer, columnist and podcaster currently living in Kolkata. He is a columnist for Mint Lounge, the Hindu and the host of the Sandip Roy Show on Indian Express. His work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, BBC, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, the Times of India, Firstpost, Huffington Post, Conde Nast Traveller and other publications. For more than a decade, Roy was editor of Trikone, the world’s oldest magazine on LGBTQ+ South Asian issues.
SM 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.
Rohit K Dasgupta is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE and co-author of Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians and Cultural Belonging in Britain (Hurst/OUP, 2025). He also edits two book series: Ethnographic Innovations, South Asian Perspectives (with Niharika Banerjea & Paul Boyce) for Routledge and South Asian Screens (with Sangita Gopal) for Bloomsbury.
Find more information and book your free place here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/events/non-binary-lives
This event will be held online and at London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, UK.