HMC Fellow delivers 2025 LGBT+ History Month Lecture

Harris Manchester College Fellow Mary Jean Chan recently delivered the University of Oxford LGBT+ History Month Lecture, a key component in the University’s celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history – and part of a national programme of events at UK educational institutions.

Recent speakers in this high-profile annual lecture, which draws a month-long series of talks and events at the University to a close, have included Max Siegel, Dr Jack Doyle and Professor Stephen Whittle.

Dr Chan’s lecture, which took place on 27 February at the St Cross Building, was entitled Losing and Finding Oneself Through Queer Poetry: A Personal Journey of Reading and Writing Queerly.

“As a writer, I am first and foremost a reader.” Mary Jean Chan, in their 2025 LGBT+ History Month Lecture.

Image: Ray Burmiston

During the lecture Dr Chan explored the role of queer poetry in their own journey of becoming a poet, editor and lecturer of creative writing, with close readings of a range of writers and poets. In doing so they drew on their own history of growing up in Hong Kong and their discovery of poets within the Anglo-American canon such as Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich and Mary Oliver.

Dr Chan’s debut collection, Flèche, won the Costa Book Award for Poetry, and their second collection, Bright Fear, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Writers’ Prize. They are a Departmental Lecturer in Poetry at Oxford’s Department of Continuing Education and became a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester last year, having previously attended the College as a student.

View the full lecture here.