dr. J. (Jesper) Verhoef

NWO Open Competition XS grant (2024-2025) for the project:

A Marriage of Convenience? A Web-Historical Analysis of the Relations between Transgender and Gay Organisations (2008-2023)

The acronym LGBT suggests a natural alliance between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. However, it masks the fraught history between ‘LG’ and the only recently added ‘T’. Although the Web provided a key battleground for gay/transgender relations, how these relationships have taken shape online is still unclear. To address this gap, this project is the first to study a unique LGBT database, comprising 400 archived Dutch websites (2008-2023). Drawing on hyperlink analyses and interviews, it provides quantitative and qualitative insights into the online ties and tensions between ‘LG’ and ‘T’ and contributes to the burgeoning field of web-historical research.