Queering cybersecurity: An alternative research agenda

Basu, S; Biddolph, C

Queering cybersecurity: An alternative research agenda

Basu, S Biddolph, C

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Publisher:: TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Critical Studies on Security, 2025, ahead-of-print
Issue Date:: 2025-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Basu, S
dc.contributor.author	Biddolph, C https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3588-3128
dc.date.accessioned	2025-08-06T04:23:12Z
dc.date.available	2025-08-06T04:23:12Z
dc.date.issued	2025-01-01
dc.identifier.citation	Critical Studies on Security, 2025, ahead-of-print
dc.identifier.issn	2162-4887
dc.identifier.issn	2162-4909
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/189231
dc.description.abstract	Current scholarship on cybersecurity in International Relations tends to emphasise state-centric, militarised, and overly securitised perspectives. However, an emerging body of critical and feminist scholarship seeks to challenge this dominant perspective. This article draws from and extends these critical perspectives to propose a creative intervention of queering cybersecurity. By bringing queer scholarship, methodologies, and possibilities into conversation with critical cyber scholarship, the article sketches the contours of an alternative research agenda. This is developed firstly, by drawing necessary attention to the experiences of queer people in cyberspace, including both generative and violent encounters that enable spaces for queer flourishing. Secondly, by developing and maintaining a queer, subversive ethos committed to disrupting the cyber status quo through queering, hacking, and glitching the system. Thirdly, by exposing the violent hierarchies of cybersecurity, which sit at the intersections of cisheterosexism, coloniality, racism, and other structures of violence. Through empirical examples presented, the article demonstrates a proposed research agenda, which offers opportunities to expand cyber to include queer intimacies and subjectivities, disrupt binary logics of cyber securitisations, and challenge the boundaries of knowledge production in and on cybersecurity. Ultimately, the article’s intervention for queering cyber scholarship invites further exploration and contemplation for reimagining cybersecurity otherwise.
dc.language	English
dc.publisher	TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
dc.relation.ispartof	Critical Studies on Security
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/21624887.2025.2502716
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subject	1606 Political Science
dc.subject.classification	4408 Political science
dc.title	Queering cybersecurity: An alternative research agenda
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.for	1606 Political Science
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design and Society
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
dc.rights.license	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.date.updated	2025-08-06T04:23:11Z
pubs.publication-status	Published
pubs.volume	ahead-of-print

Abstract:

Current scholarship on cybersecurity in International Relations tends to emphasise state-centric, militarised, and overly securitised perspectives. However, an emerging body of critical and feminist scholarship seeks to challenge this dominant perspective. This article draws from and extends these critical perspectives to propose a creative intervention of queering cybersecurity. By bringing queer scholarship, methodologies, and possibilities into conversation with critical cyber scholarship, the article sketches the contours of an alternative research agenda. This is developed firstly, by drawing necessary attention to the experiences of queer people in cyberspace, including both generative and violent encounters that enable spaces for queer flourishing. Secondly, by developing and maintaining a queer, subversive ethos committed to disrupting the cyber status quo through queering, hacking, and glitching the system. Thirdly, by exposing the violent hierarchies of cybersecurity, which sit at the intersections of cisheterosexism, coloniality, racism, and other structures of violence. Through empirical examples presented, the article demonstrates a proposed research agenda, which offers opportunities to expand cyber to include queer intimacies and subjectivities, disrupt binary logics of cyber securitisations, and challenge the boundaries of knowledge production in and on cybersecurity. Ultimately, the article’s intervention for queering cyber scholarship invites further exploration and contemplation for reimagining cybersecurity otherwise.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/189231