Sam Stiegler will offer reflections on the normative conventions governing research with queer and trans people. Based on his experience researching alongside and with queer and trans communities, he will analyze the ways that traditional approaches to research ethics sometimes make it difficult both for queer and trans people to participate in research and for researchers to conceive of and/or carry out meaningful research on queer and trans topics. Such an excavation of research norms hopes to inspire researchers to ask necessary critical questions about the structures controlling what is deemed suitable and appropriate in conversations about qualitative research towards exploring who and what such norms serve.

Stiegler is the author of two books about queer approaches to qualitative research: Going Along with Trans, Queer, and Non-Binary Youth (SUNY Press, 2024) and, with LJ Slovin, Embracing Queer and Trans Frameworks in Qualitative Educational Research: Showing Our Work (Routledge, 2025).  Both books were awarded Honorable Mention for the 2025 AERA Qualitative Studies SIG Outstanding Book Award competition, in 2025 and 2026 respectively. He has over two decades of experience working on LGBTQ+ issues in education in the US, Canada, and Australia. He is currently a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. Previously served as the Hunt-Simes Visiting Junior Chair of Sexuality Studies at the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre at the University of Sydney and as visiting assistant professor of educational studies at Colgate.

Co-sponsored by Educational Studies