Olimpia Burchiellaro (she/her) is an anthropologist and senior lecturer at the University of Essex, where she teaches modules on ethnographic methods, social economies, and community organizing. Her research is on queer political economy, LGBTQ+ activism, gentrification and homocapitalism. She is the author of The Gentrification of Queer Activism (Bristol University Press, 2023) and has conducted research on corporations and queer value in cities such as London, São Paulo, Nairobi and Buenos Aires. Her work is published in journals including Sexualities, Organization Studies and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Olimpia is the incoming co-Chair of the LGBTQA Caucus at the International Studies Association (ISA). Since 2022, she sits on the Management Committee of The Friends of the Joiners Arms, an award-winning cooperative opening London’s first community-owned queer pub.
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