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Doing Research Culture the Bisexual Way

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September 23rd is Bisexual Visibility Day, or, as I like to think of it, our annual excuse to watch the millennial bisexual coming-of-age film, The Mummy (1999). But when you’re finished doing that, I wanted to spend a bit of time reflecting on what I bring to my Research Culture work as a bisexual, queer person.

I’m not here to talk about the current EDI challenges in higher education and, well, everywhere (*gestures wildly*). If you want to see me talk about the challenges and opportunities for inclusivity in the Research Culture space, there is a recording of me from this year’s annual UKSG conference here that does just that (where I managed to say “erm” more times than anyone should in one talk). What I want to talk about today is culture and how we as culture makers and changers can look to experiences of bisexual cultures as signs of what we could do more of to enhance research culture. While I see bisexuality (and queerness – but that’s probably a whole other blog!) as a fundamental way of approaching life, it is also something that is shaped by communities and cultures that do not always serve us. For the purpose of today’s post, I want to focus on two challenges and one opportunity: (In)Visibility, Belonging, and Plurality.

(In)Visibility

A recent systematic review of academic papers on bisexual erasure found that Bi + sexuality was often unintelligible and unrepresented, with participants expressing “feeling erased within a variety of settings, including workplace policies, education systems, textbooks, LGBTQ events, sexual health resources and popular culture.” The same study also found that for many, “they were unaware that identifying outside of this binary [heterosexual/homosexual] was possible […].”Others reported feeling like imposters in both heterosexual and homosexual spaces, never fully belonging anywhere. (McCole and Anderson 2025)

Culture actively contributes to this erasure. It is not neutral: what we choose to represent – or fail to represent – shapes whether people feel real, valued, and seen.

We see echoes of this in our own research culture surveys. Bisexual respondents consistently reported lower scores than peers. They felt their roles were less explicitly valued in faculty communications, less recognized for their informal EDI contributions, and less likely to see their research groups as diverse or representative of the wider community.

While it’s hard for me to say that bisexual (in)visibility in research spaces is connected to this broader discussion of bi erasure, the fact that bi individuals equally feel unseen in research communities is significant. As we know so much work within research remains invisible – e.g., EDI work, citizenship, technical or professional support, lack of seniority etc – we have an opportunity to learn here from the bisexual experience of invisibility to learn more about how we can foster communities of belonging.

Belonging

In her book Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality, (2022) Julia Shaw reflects on her own responses to the Fritz Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG), which asks respondents to consider not just their sexual attractions but also their social worlds. Do you spend time mostly in heterosexual spaces? Do you frequent queer spaces? Who makes up your closest circles? She notes that:

This is tapping into your social circle that has influence on you, and vice versa. If you surround yourself only with straight people, you are probably more likely to automatically see yourself as straight. Or, perhaps if you are queer in a straight social group, you feel isolated and don’t know who to talk to or share your sexual interests with. Either way, I think that reflecting on whom you surround yourself with and the impact this has on your sexual identity and sexual expression is powerful. (Shaw 2022)

Shaw is here demonstrating how, as bisexual individuals, we are shaped by the cultures of sexuality that surround us. And this can create both a sense of belonging and of isolation. But who shapes those cultures? Are these preordained systems into which people of various sexualities slot? The philosopher María Lugones offers a powerful reflection on the interdependence of (oppressed) peoples and their cultures. She argues that:

Structures construct or constitute persons not just in the sense of giving them a façade, but also in the sense of giving them emotions, beliefs, norms, desires, and intentions that are their own. That is, the person does not just wear a mask, but that person is the person who the structure constructs. (Lugones 2003)

But who determines culture? And who gets to decide who belongs? When we look at the stories and theories of the oppressed, we can start to ask ourselves here whether the cultures and systems around us can continue to serve us – if they ever did.

What both Shaw and Lugones say here, while – in my own experience – true for the bisexual experience, and the experience of many oppressed peoples, it is also true for research culture. Both exist within systems that often serve the dominant group – here straight, white, male, patriarchal – and leave others masked, excluded, or struggling to find belonging.  Tackling research cultures that no longer serve us, like tackling bi erasure and bisexual feelings of belonging, requires us to think drastically about homogenising systems that keep people isolated, invisible, and occasionally oppressed.

So, rather than simply sharing our challenges, what can research culture learn from bisexual experiences? For me, bisexuality and its experiences, even in its erasure and lack of belonging, offers an opportunity for plurality. But like Shaw, I think it’s important we ensure that, when thinking about the plurality and fluidity of bisexuality, we do not conflate this with choice. She rightly notes that media reporting from the last fifty years extolling bisexuality’s newness or potential as an opting-out of binary sexuality in fact repeats “exact same misconceptions, uneasy feeling of change, and echoes of optimism” that has always dominated this discourse. (Shaw 2022)

Plurality

In her book, Shaw spends a great deal of time defining bisexuality. She lands on bisexuality not meaning “two” (limiting only to two genders – newsflash: there are many many more, guys!), “but the two are not men and women, they are same and other.” (Shaw 2022) This framing resonates deeply for me as someone invested in cultural change. It disrupts binaries. It says: there is always an other, another possibility, another way of being.

What if research culture embraced that kind of plurality?

Too often academia, like heterosexuality and patriarchy, is homogenising. It wants one way of publishing, one route to career progression, one image of what a “real academic” looks like. Those who don’t fit are excluded or dismissed.

This is where bisexual ways of knowing can inspire. When I was a researcher, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing changed my life. Her opening pages of Epistemology of the Closet are a battle cry not only for rethinking sexuality, but also for rethinking the academic knowledge and modes of thinking that keep us stuck:

Epistemology of the Closet proposes that many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture as a whole are structured – indeed, fractured – by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively male, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. (Sedgwick 1991)

For Sedgwick, Western culture is riddled with entrenched binaries: homo/hetero, knowledge/ignorance, public/private, masculine/feminine, majority/minority. These binaries don’t just limit sexuality; they limit thought itself. They fracture our understanding of the world.

What if there was not simply two, but an other? Perhaps if we created a research culture more open to pluralities rather than binaries we would create not only a culture in which bisexual individuals – who are often isolated and erased by binarized thought – felt a greater sense of belonging, but where the real work of research culture could flourish, unpicking the unhelpful systems and constructs that keep us all stuck, isolated, and erased.

Next Steps

While this has not been explicitly about queerness, this blog has demonstrated what we can learn from those who inhabit those interstitial spaces between cultures. As my colleague Dr Lucy Hinnie has written, “Queerness is a lived experience that transcends eras and epochs. It is both a retaliation and resistance to the norm.” (Hinnie 2024) That is equally true of bisexuality.

The bisexual movement, as scholar David M. Halperin notes, has illuminated how fragile and constructed sexual categories really are. (Halperin 2009) That insight is powerful not just for sexuality but for any system of belonging, including research.

So, this is a battle cry to do things a little more bisexual. Let’s treat invisibility not as a permanent condition but as a call to resist erasure. Let’s treat isolation not as inevitable but as proof that our current systems need redesigning. Culture shouldn’t be exclusive, and it isn’t static either: the word has its etymological origins in the act of cultivation, of careful husbandry, of growing and developing. So let us cultivate a culture that refuses isolation, refuses binaries, refuses erasure, and develop one that welcomes an other.

Dr Emily Ennis is the Research Culture Manager at the University of Leeds. 

Bibliography

  • Halperin, David M. 2009. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bisexual.” Journal of Bisexuality 9 (3–4): 451–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299710903316679.
  • Hinnie, L. R. 2024. “Queering the Castalian: James VI and I and ‘Narratives of Blood.’” In Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland, edited by A. Kennedy and S. Weston, 194–209. St Andrews Studies in Scottish History. Boydell & Brewer.
  • Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. ProQuest Ebook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leeds/detail.action?docID=1352201.
  • McCole, A. R., and J. R. Anderson. 2025. “‘Not Queer Enough’: A Systematic Review of the Literature Exploring Experiences of Bi-Erasure.” Journal of Bisexuality, 1–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299716.2025.2498333.
  • Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1991. Epistemology of the Closet. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
  • Shaw, Julia. 2022. Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality. London: Canongate.