Matt Smith

I am currently a Research Fellow on the GambLGBTQ+ project working with co-PI's Dr Laetitia Zeeman and Dr Alex Sawyer. GambLGBTQ+ is a study aiming to understand gambling in LGBTQ+ Communities. It is a collaboration between researchers at the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender (CTSG) and the School of Education, Sport and Health Sciences, University of Brighton, LGBT Switchboard Brighton and Hove, and YouGov. It is a mixed methods project which includes conducting a survey to understand the prevalence of gambling and gambling harms amongst LGBTQ+ communities for the first time in Great Britain. Interviews, online diaries and photovoice are all used to gain a more in-depth understanding of the harms, barriers to support, protective factors, and actions those with lived experience would like to see.

The PhD project I recently completed (January 2024) concerns researching trans and non-binary embodied experiences of city space and the implications for urban planning theory and practice. How does contemporary English local planning practice incorporate gender into policy and practice? Can planning be inclusive of trans and non-binary residents?

I utilised creative mapping methods to explore trans and non-binary embodiment and spatialities, alongside discourse analysis and stakeholder interviews to understand local planning practice. In the thesis an infrastructural approach to trans life is developed in relation to the policy domains of mobility, housing, and green spaces. Trans infrastructures are conceptualised as the collective dependencies and spatialised flows of care that enable and constrain trans lives. Trans infrastructures is conceived as a bridging concept between lived experiences, embodied knowledges, and the discipline of planning. An expansive infrastructural lens provides a conceptual guide for planners and associated practitioners, but crucially and more radically a conceptual platform from which trans people can better throw bricks.

It is available here: Trans Infrastructures

My research interests are contemporary urban governance and the role of spatial policy within this; the geographies of gender and sexuality; the epistemics of British planning and it's relationship to colonialism; how queer and transfeminist political praxis can ameliorate and transform the inequalities LGBTQ+ communities face.