Justin Bengry founded and led the world’s first MA in Queer History at the University of London from 2017-2024, where he was also Director of the Centre for Queer History. He is a cultural historian of sexualities and the queer past with projects on capitalism and the Pink Pound, ‘Turing’s Law’ and policies surrounding the so-called ‘gay pardon’, and LGBTQ+ experiences of COVID-19. He is co-convenor of the Institute of Historical Research History of Sexuality Seminar, a co-founder and Managing Editor of the NOTCHES, the world’s leading history of sexuality blog, and a member of the Editorial Collective of History Workshop Journal.

Before leading the MA Queer History, Dr Bengry worked with Historic England’s Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage, which saw historic locations across England receive statutory listing on the basis of their LGBTQ+ significance. He was then a researcher on Queer Beyond London: Sexualities and Localities, which identifies the significance of place and locality to LGBTQ lives and experiences beyond the capital. With colleagues from the Queer Beyond London project he has co-edited two volumes: Locating Queer Histories: Places and Traces across the UK and A Queer Scrapbook: Britain and Ireland since 1945.

Research interests

• Queer History and Histories of Sexualities
• Cultural History and Histories of Media
• Local and Community History
• Public History and Practice
• Oral History and Archives

Justin Bengry’s work in queer history has taken him across several distinct areas of research. Initially a scholar of queer histories of capitalism, he is the leading historian of the Pink Pound. Undertaking this research, using popular culture and media sources, means that he has also written about theatre and film, publishing and magazines, fashion, business and activism. He has also undertaken extensive research into the UK government’s pardon and disregard programme for homosexual offences, known as ‘Turing’s Law’ or the so-called ‘gay pardon’. In this, Dr Bengry’s work intersects with the law, activism, and policy as well as the ongoing criminalisation of queer men in the UK. Most recently, Bengry was co-lead of the Queer Pandemic project, an international partnership to record LGBTQ+ experiences of COVID-19, which included building perhaps the world’s largest oral history archive recording queer people’s experiences of the pandemic.

Teaching

For more than 25 years Dr Bengry has taught at universities across the UK, US and Canada primarily in European and world history from the medieval period to the present. His focus more recently has been on the history of sexuality and queer histories, including teaching at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. He has supervised numerous postgraduate students in all areas of queer history in British, European and global contexts. 

Expertise and public engagement

Dr Bengry is regularly approached by British and international media outlets to comment on all areas of queer history, with his insights having been published in many UK and international newspapers, magazines, and online media on areas ranging from  the business of Pride and LGBTQ+ popular culture and media to the use of the word queer and the urgent importance of recording our history. He has been an invited to expert panels on all areas of queer history and delivered keynotes and annual lectures across the UK, Finland, Israel and Canada. Each year he gives dozens of talks on queer history and the Pink Pound to schools, cultural institutions, government bodies, and businesses.

Selected publications

'Justin Bengry, Matt Cook, Alison Oram, eds, Locating Queer Histories: places and traces across the UK (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

‘Reflections on the criminalisation of sex between men in England and Wales’, IPPR Progressive Review 29 no. 3-4 (2022), pp. 211-218

‘Can and should we queer the past?’, in What is History, Now? How the past and the present speak to each other, edited by Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb, 48-65. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021.

‘Films and Filming: The Making of a Queer Marketplace in Pre-decriminalization Britain’. In British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives edited by Brian Lewis, 244-66. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.

‘Courting the Pink Pound: Men Only & the Queer Consumer, 1935-1939’. History Workshop Journal 68 (2009): 122-48.