The Gender + Sexuality Data Lab is a north star for researchers, practitioners, activists and creatives engaged in critical work on collecting, analysing and using gender, sex and sexuality data. It is for people who feel outside the data systems that shape our everyday lives – and want to change them.

Directed by Dr Kevin Guyan, the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab adopts a queer data approach to contemporary data practices. Situated at the intersection of research, teaching, knowledge exchange and public engagement, the Lab centres the lived experiences of ‘box breakers’ – individuals misaligned with the data categories assigned to them – and the many communities erased or sidelined by methods used to collect, analyse and use all types of data.

The Gender + Sexuality Data Lab launched in 2025 and is based in the University of Edinburgh Business School.

When a category allows us to pass into the world, we might not notice that we inhabit that category. […] Rewrite the world from the experience of not being able to pass into the world.
Sara Ahmed, On Being Included