Diego
Garcia Rodriguez

Diego is a Future Leaders Research Fellow. He holds a PhD in Gender and Sexuality Studies (University College London), an MSc in Asian Studies (Lund University/National University of Singapore), and a BA in Journalism (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, University of Tampere and Korea University). Diego’s doctoral research examined the everyday religion of Indonesian LGBTIQ+ Muslims, analysing faith and spirituality as sources of agentic power and exploring their implications for wellbeing and mental health. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Java, he also traced the emergence of progressive Islamic initiatives and the role of “allies” who support queer Muslims. This work informed his first monograph, "Gender, Sexuality and Islam in Contemporary Indonesia: Queer Muslims and their Allies" (Routledge, 2023), and a wider theoretical contribution on queer religious agency that moves beyond agency-as-resistance to take seriously forms of ritual practice, devotion, and submission. Diego has been awarded highly competitive funding, including a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, a UBEL DTP ESRC doctoral studentship, and scholarships from Erasmus, Complutense, Lund University, NIAS SUPRA (University of Copenhagen), and the Annette Lawson Charitable Trust. Before joining the University of Leicester, he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Nottingham. He has also worked as a Lecturer in Global Health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (University of Sussex/University of Brighton) and as a researcher on the experiences of people living with HIV, with particular attention to stigma and mental health. Between 2020 and 2021, Diego was a Senior Researcher in a social justice consultancy, working with clients including Mind, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the FCDO, Kaleidoscope Trust, Womankind Worldwide, and World Habitat, among others. He specialises in participatory research, process and impact evaluation, theories of change, and monitoring, evaluation and learning. Areas of expertise include anthropology and sociology of mental health; religion and everyday lived religion; gender and LGBTIQ+ subjectivities; refugee and asylum studies; Southeast Asia; intersectional approaches to gender, sexuality and Islam; LGBTIQ+ health (including HIV-related stigma); participatory and peer research; and impact and outcome evaluation. Current Research: Transforming LGBTIQ+ asylum policies: A multi-country cross-sectoral approach to research, policy, and advocacy Project Summary: My UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship aims to transform how we understand and respond to LGBTIQ+ asylum globally through a decolonial, participatory research approach. Despite the rising number of displaced people (30.5 million by mid-2023), there remains little data or policy attention focused on the specific challenges faced by LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers. These include exposure to homophobia and transphobia, barriers to legal and social support, economic precarity and heightened vulnerability to violence. In the UK, for instance, government data collection captures only sexual orientation, excluding gender identity altogether. Globally, asylum research continues to neglect South-to-South movements and often lacks meaningful collaboration between activists and scholars in the Global North and South. Working with regional steering committees and an Alternative Ethics Board composed of LGBTIQ+ people seeking asylum and refugees, this cross-sectoral project will begin in the UK, using it as a core case study to identify systemic gaps in asylum policy and practice. It will then expand to a comparative analysis across the European Union, with a particular focus on Spain and France as two strategically important sites: both sit at the centre of contemporary migration routes and policy debates, and both offer distinct legal, institutional, and political contexts through which to examine protection, credibility and reception. This EU strand will be strengthened through a placement at the European Parliament, enabling the fellowship to translate findings into real-time policy conversations and to support practical knowledge exchange across member states and UK–EU partners in the post-Brexit landscape. The project’s comparative design is a deliberate methodology grounded in colonial and postcolonial entanglements that continue to shape asylum governance, legal infrastructures and migration routes. The fellowship therefore works through three “colonial pairings” to surface how historical power relations and contemporary policy regimes interact across regions: Mexico–Spain, UK–Kenya, and France–Lebanon. Mexico–Spain will enable an analysis of how Iberian colonial legacies, language and transnational ties shape migration governance across Latin America and its connections to Europe. UK–Kenya will be useful to explore how British colonial and Commonwealth-linked legal and administrative architectures echo into present-day asylum and refugee systems, while also centring Kenya’s position as a major refugee-hosting state and regional hub for mobility and protection. France–Lebanon will examine how Francophone institutional networks and the afterlives of the French Mandate intersect with displacement dynamics in the SWANA region, including the political economy of humanitarianism and the uneven distribution of responsibility for protection. The study will then extend to Mexico, Lebanon, and Kenya, which are three key sites in global asylum routes. Mexico will provide critical insights into LGBTIQ+ migration across Latin America, where asylum routes span both South-to-North and South-to-South directions. Lebanon will offer a lens into asylum dynamics within resource-constrained and politically complex settings in the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region. Kenya, as a major refugee-hosting nation in Africa, will shed light on South-to-South asylum experiences within the African continent. Across all sites, the fellowship will use participatory, art-based methods to generate rich, policy-relevant evidence grounded in lived experience. Key themes will include mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, asylum journeys and routes, credibility and evidentiary practices, faith, spirituality, and everyday religion, safety, violence, and protection, housing and accommodation, detention and bordering practices, access to physical and mental healthcare, community care and mutual aid, family, kinship and chosen families, digital life, surveillance and visibility, language, translation and (mis)recognition, work, livelihood and economic precarity, and resistance, joy and future-making. Creative dissemination is built in from the outset: outputs will include four documentaries developed through an agreement with the London Migration Film Festival, as well as exhibitions and theatre plays co-created with Ice and Fire to reach wider public audiences and decision-makers. Through these multi-country comparisons, the fellowship will generate new evidence to inform more inclusive policies and strengthen collaborations between researchers, NGOs and policymakers. The team is composed of Dr Diego Garcia Rodriguez as the PI and two research associates who will work in solidarity with key global partners such as Micro Rainbow, Rainbow Railroad, ORAM, the Equal Rights Coalition, the European Parliament and British APPGs, among others. Among these, Micro Rainbow will be especially important to the UK strand of the fellowship, bringing frontline expertise from its work supporting LGBTQI+ migrants and refugees through safe housing, social inclusion and employability support. Rainbow Railroad will contribute insight from its international work helping LGBTQI+ people at risk reach safety through emergency relocation, crisis response and other forms of assistance; ORAM will strengthen the project through its advocacy, research and protection work with LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees globally; the Equal Rights Coalition will offer an important intergovernmental platform for engagement with states and civil society on LGBTI rights; and the European Parliament placement will help bring the fellowship’s findings into live EU policy conversations and wider legislative debate. Furthermore, academic partners such as the Lebanese American University, the National University of Mexico and the University of the Witwatersrand will play a key role in co-creating and disseminating our findings. Using a mixed-methods participatory, decolonial framework, the project centres the voices of LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers and refugees, ensuring they shape both the research and the policy outcomes. To summarise, the fellowship will: 1. Identify the gaps and biases in asylum systems that fail to protect LGBTIQ+ people, focusing on the UK, selected EU states and Global South contexts. 2. Work collaboratively with activists, scholars, and people with lived experience to develop evidence-based and inclusive policy tools. 3. Share and promote outputs with policymakers, legislators, NGOs and the general public to drive systemic transformation.