{"id":1147,"date":"2026-06-29T13:15:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2026-06-30T10:18:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T09:18:39","slug":"pride-month-experiences-of-lgbtqia-maths-students-at-the-open-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/pride-month-experiences-of-lgbtqia-maths-students-at-the-open-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Pride Month – Experiences of LGBTQIA+ Maths students at the Open University"},"content":{"rendered":"

My name is Xinyi, I am queer transmasculine person in my mid 20s . I am working on a Mathematics degree and currently in stage 2, having just finished the M208 module, which has been my favourite module to study so far. I work as chef in my day job, and in my free time I love skating and playing roller derby, enjoying musical theatre and playing videogames.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

A photo of Xinji Lu.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in February, I joined a project team investigating the experience of LGBTQIA+ students at the Open University, under the OU virtual internship programme. The team consists of LGBTQIA+ scholars across all faculties within the OU, and I also had the opportunity to work with another lovely student intern, Aimee, on this project. This project was carried out under a \u2018students as partners\u2019 approach, as the team felt that it was imperative to continue to listen to student voices throughout their project, and this research approach really resonated with me. The project team is very approachable and supportive, and treated us with a lot of respect, is always willing to listen to our opinions, and our contributions always felt very valuable to the team.<\/p>\n

Aimee and I also had the opportunity to present our project at the Advance HE conference in March, which was a valuable learning opportunity. Since the majority of our internship and studies are carried out online, it was very nice to have the opportunity to attend an in-person event, and being in a physical space with many others within the sector who also care deeply about reducing barriers in Higher Education was very encouraging.<\/p>\n

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From left to right are Dr Ellesar Elhaggagi, Aimee Waterer, Dr Andrew Potter, Dr Leigh Downes, Prof Caroline Derry, and Xinji Lu.<\/p><\/div>\n

My motivation to join this project came from a place of wanting to do something for the LGBTQIA+ community, and initially I did not see much relevance between this project and my maths studies. I\u2019ve always enjoyed being involved within the LGBTQIA+ community socially, but I have never considered the ways in which my identity would impact my position in academia before. A big part of this project consists of talking to LGBTQIA+ students and scholars, all of whom has such a varied experience in life and of Higher Education. Having the opportunity to listen to all these intersectional experiences and the chance to work with amazing LGBTQIA+ scholars gave me a chance to reflect on my own position. My journey of studying at the OU so far has been a lot of long hours sitting alone at my desk, while my identity has never been a concern during my studies, this is not the case for a lot of other queer students studying at the OU. There are unique challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ scholars and students, whether these are individuals or structural barriers, and under the current sociopolitical climate, it has never been more important for the LGBTQIA+ community to feel safe and supported. As an institution, the OU strives to remove barriers within education and achieve an inclusive learning environment for its students, and we really hope that our project will help the OU identify where the policy has exceled, and provide recommendations for improvement, so that our fellow LGBTQIA+ students can truly feel safe and well supported.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is Xinyi, I am queer transmasculine person in my mid 20s . I am working on a Mathematics degree and currently in stage 2, having just finished the M208 module, which has been my favourite module to study … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}