Richie Jackson is an award-winning Broadway, television, and film producer. Richie went from gay teen activist in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis to raising a gay son forty years later. Now, as the author of the best-selling book Gay Like Me, he strips away the rainbow-tinted veneer of what it looks like to be LGBTQ+ today, exposing the glorious but treacherous reality.

In memory of Jonathan Cooper OBE

We are proud to name this lecture for the late Jonathan Cooper OBE, an inspiring human rights lawyer, tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and commentator on issues such as trans rights, conversion therapy and the rights of people living with HIV. Jonathan died suddenly in September 2021.

In February 2022, Mansfield College, in association with the Faculty of History, established Oxford University’s first Professorship in LGBTQ+ History, the Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities.

The Jonathan Cooper Professor will lead and expand the study and teaching of LGBTQ+ History at Oxford University, and is the first fully endowed specialist post of its kind in the UK. It has been made possible by a generous donation from Professor Peter Baldwin and Dr Lisbet Rausing, historians and co-founders of the Arcadia Fund. The first post-holder will be appointed in 2023.

Supported by the Sigrid Rausing Trust.