Futures of SOGI Data Forum

January 2026 marks one year since US President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on ‘Defending Women from Gender Identity Extremism’ and three years since the publication of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) population level data in England and Wales, one of the first countries in the world to ask SOGI questions in a national census.

Around the world, more censuses, surveys and research exercises are asking SOGI questions. While often well-intentioned (e.g., meeting the call for LGBTQ folks to “count” and addressing health and socioeconomic disparities), these data practices often invite new risks and dangers, creating challenges for the most marginalized LGBTQ individuals.

We often know the shape of these challenges – what is less often discussed is: how do we move forward through this moment? What solutions, organizing efforts and pragmatic approaches are working in response to a tide of anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ attacks?

The Forum will include action-oriented reflections from key policy and research advocates, ideas and inspiration for approaches to SOGI data for 2026 and beyond, and practical tips for how we collectively move forward through this moment. We aim to come together to recognize the challenges of the last year, drawing on our collective wisdom and strength to keep doing important and critically-engaged work with SOGI data in the new year – please join us!

The Forum is part of a larger project launched in January 2025, Gay Numbers: The Use and Misuse of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data in the UK and US, led by gender and sexuality scholars Kevin Guyan (Chancellor’s Fellow in the University of Edinburgh Business School) and Jamie Budnick (Assistant Professor in Sociology at Cornell).