LGBT+ History Month special! A 15-1 interview with Dr James Greenwood-Reeves
James reflects on LGBT+ History Month as a valuable opportunity to learn from the past, celebrate community, and recognise the importance of visibility.
In this interview James shares the creative and collaborative influences behind his work, including Law’s a Drag – a network that brings academics and drag artists together to explore lived experiences of law.
Can you describe your role in 100 words or less?
I’m a lecturer in law, teaching on lots of modules like constitutional law, law and society, and police powers. My research covers an eclectic but fascinating range of issues: protest, violence, queer legal theory, and law and drag. Most interestingly, I am part of ‘Law’s a Drag’, a network of academics, lawyers, and drag artists, who want to discover how drag artists experience law, making impact-focused research!
What really impresses you about Leeds?
I count my blessings that I have such amazing colleagues. As well as being excellent teachers and inspired thinkers, they provide so much support for developing creative and innovative research. It’s hard to imagine many law schools encouraging, and providing real support for, the work we’ve been doing using drag and theatre! And who else would let me parade around as dragademic alter ego Alice Aforethought on their public social media profile?
What are you most looking forward to working on in the next 12 months?
Of all the projects I am engaged with, I’m most excited about working with drag artists to start a funded research project, using creative methods they have chosen themselves, to learn more about how they experience law and injustice in their working lives. That includes letting the artist decide the research methods, and to help form the findings and conclusions. Most importantly, it means giving the artists control over outputs once the data gathering is done: videos, performances, publications, and so forth. They are the creatives, after all: I can’t wait to see what artistic project they come up with in the future...!
February is LGBT+ History Month. Why do you think awareness months like this are significant?
We can never let ourselves get complacent about the progress we think we have achieved, in securing freedom, safety, and liberty for LGBT+ people, in the UK or internationally. The idea of a “march of progress” as a linear, inevitable journey, has been proven demonstrably false by the very visible backsliding we have seen in recent years, in terms of the rights of trans people, public discourse about gender expression, the rise of neoconservative and queerphobic political power, and so on. LGBT+ History Month is an important way of taking space to reflect upon this agonising, and agonistic, journey – in terms of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we are going together.
In what ways does your work help us better understand the experiences and challenges faced by LGBT+ people today?
We are confronting a near total lack of research into how drag artists – predominantly queer, marginalised, precariously employed people, who exist within multiple different axes of social injustice – really experience law. Our initial workshops with artists have revealed that there is much more to explore than we initially thought. Artists have indicated that they have experienced problems with contract law, access to justice, security and policing, harassment, and even insurance law. And once you recognise how central drag has historically been, and continues to be, within queer communities, it becomes clear that a lack of research in this space – and a lack of power to press for change – is a continuing injustice at the heart of LGBT+ society.
What first drew you to researching LGBT+ issues and queer perspectives within the law?
I am queer. My drag artist husband (unsurprisingly) is queer, and the social world we live in together is this rich, beautiful, weird, kaleidoscopic tapestry of gay friends, lesbian neighbours, trans colleagues, and impossible-to-define freaks who join us to play Dungeons and Dragons. Still, I started my legal career with a painfully traditional, doctrinal approach to law and jurisprudence, because it was all I had ever been taught. But as I gained more independence as an academic, I realised that there as much more to be discovered, taught, and shared about law than this narrow conception of it. In particular, I remember when my friend and colleague Dr Rosie Fox and I were watching RuPaul’s Drag Race one night, with a bottle of wine, and both realised: Drag Race is a legal system! And we decided to write a paper about it. My legal academic life very much came out of the closet from that point onwards.
How does your research help shape wider conversations about inclusion, rights, and visibility?
While ‘Law’s a Drag’ is still in its infancy, we’ve already discovered that there is much to learn about how drag artists – as very visible and important people within queer spaces – experience law in their lives. Our hope is that by getting this important research done, we can show the world what it is that artists feel and see in the world around them, and then fight for change.
More broadly, I would say that one thing LAD has already done is show that you can be academically rigorous, belong to a respectable institution, play the game of the neoliberal managerialist university, and still demonstrate queer joy. You can bring colour, glamour, and playfulness into academia. We insist upon it, in fact!
Can you tell us more about how 'Law's a Drag' began?
We are a network of around 80 artists, academics, and lawyers, mostly based in England but with members across the UK, and some overseas. And we keep growing! It started in 2023 when Dr Joy Twemlow, Dr Fox, and I realised that we wanted to do more with drag, that we wanted to disrupt the academic conference and the institutions’ hierarchies of power, and that we wanted to ensure that drag artists were front and centre in these projects. Since then, we’ve hosted multiple workshops, variously funded by SLSA, SLS, and our law school - including forum theatre events, a trans rights fundraising cabaret, and numerous networking and community events. All of this has been leading up to our current projects: discovering how artists experience law, and making materials to help teach students, artists, and the wider public about the legal issues the community faces.
What have you learned from collaborating with drag performers?
The main things I’ve learned from the artists so far include:
- I should not take myself too seriously;
- what I am used to – how I work, university processes, academic life – is not universal, and I need to question my presumptions at every opportunity;
- community isn’t a place, or a group of people: it’s a process you have to keep practising. You have to keep turning up, promoting each other’s work, showing support, reaching out, and taking care of each other;
- I should use an orange toned concealer under my foundation to help counteract the darker blue colour of stubble as it grows back, to avoid a greyish, masculine grow-back coming through my mug.
Why do you think drag works so effectively as a way to explore or question legal ideas?
As well as looking at how law affects drag artists, it’s been eye-opening to learn what drag can teach us about law. We’ve looked at themes like performance, alter egos, and parody of legal professions and spaces; it gives us a different perspective to talk about relationships of power and domination; it gives us an alternative voice, and a different way of expressing our views, about seemingly stolid, dry, legal ideas.
What do you hope people gain from engaging with your research or with 'Law's a Drag'?
We hope people understand the problems that drag artists face. We hope they are inspired to seek improvements, and to advocate for change for this community – and indeed to speak out and show solidarity with other people who face domination and oppression. And we also hope that they are informed, entertained, enlightened!
Are there any upcoming opportunities or events people should look out for?
Keep an eye out on our social media (@lawsadrag on Instagram and BlueSky) for updates! You can also sign up to our upcoming event here.
Who, or what, has had the biggest influence on you throughout your career?
Probably my former PhD supervisors, Prof. Jen Hendry and Prof. Conor O'Reilly, and friend and colleague Dr Rosie Fox. I will never stop thanking them.
What's your random claim to fame?
Katya Zamolodchikova once told me that I “probably have very nice bones” – which is reassuring.
- You can learn more about Law’s A Drag on their website, or find them on Bluesky @lawsadrag.bsky.social or Instagram at lawsadrag.
