Talk on "Queer Migration and Asylum from Russia"

Dr. Richard Mole, professor of political sociology and Director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College, London, will come to the Williams campus to deliver a public talk on “Queer Migration and Asylum from Russia.” Dr. Mole has conducted several studies broadly based in Eastern Europe on the rise of political homophobia in the post-socialist era, as well as queer migration and asylum from those countries where political homophobia is on the rise. His talk will focus on the recent rise in queer migration and asylum from Russia as a result of the rise in political homophobia signaled by the country’s “gay propaganda” law, which first took effect in 2013 and was recently strengthened in 2022.