Olimpia Burchiellaro (she/her) is an anthropologist and lecturer in Development at King’s College London. Her research sits at the intersection of queer political economy, international politics, and economic geography. Her ethnographic work has looked at the global politics of homocapitalism, tracing the financialization of LGBTQ+ rights through networks and alliances between activists and corporations in Kenya, Argentina, and Brazil. Her current ethnographic project, funded by the British Academy, explores the current challenges and opportunities for queer left organizing in a time of corporate retreat and far-right backlash, drawing from fieldwork conducted across Europe, the US, and Latin America.
Olimpia is the author of The Gentrification of Queer Activism (Bristol University Press, 2023). Her work has been published in leading journals including Antipode, Review of International Political Economy, Sexualities, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. She serves on the Editorial Board of Work, Employment & Society and is the incoming co-Chair of the LGBTQA Caucus at the International Studies Association. Since 2022, she has been a member of the Management Committee of The Friends of the Joiners Arms, an award-winning cooperative that runs a community-owned queer pub in London.
The Gentrification of Queer Activism: Diversity Politics and the Promise of Inclusion in London
The book locates promises of inclusion in a longer trajectory of capitalist accumulation, gentrification, the closure of LGBTQ+ spaces in London & an 'EDI industrial complex’ which seeks to extract the productive value of differences in pursuit of greater profitability. It ethnographically traces how inclusion - understood as a ‘cluster of promises’ - is experienced on the ground and who benefits from the promulgation of these promises.
"Burchiellaro makes a sobering and thorough argument that oppressed people's hopeful visions must surpass their own immediate experiences and conditions, no matter how dire. For without an expansive belief in justice for all, the mere acquisition of some basic rights quickly co-opts radical impulses and shifts our identifications from others on the sidelines of power to the newly welcoming ruling structures that only some will ever occupy." Sarah Schulman, Writer
“We needed this stunningly original and poignant book, and we needed Olimpia Burchiellaro to be the one to write it. She shows us how, between the managerial celebration and critical condemnation of promises of inclusion, there are forms of work and ways of life that, without this book, would continue to get completely occluded.” Melissa Tyler, University of Essex