The QED network is a community-led effort by mathematical staff and PGRs to connect and support LGBTQIA+ members of the UK mathematics community. We aim to do this by fostering visibility, mentorship and advocacy across the UK!

The impetus to set up such a network grew out of the 2024 BAMC conference under a drive for increased UK visibility and community for queer people in the mathematics community.

Our discord community is restricted to PGR students and above, for the safety and comfort of academics in the network (for example: not outing themselves unintentionally to teaching cohorts). Taught students are very welcome to interact with our website, socials, and anything else that is public-facing!

Our key missions are as follows:

1. Community: Our main mission as we get this network set up is to connect queer mathematicians together, both at meetings and within the larger UK mathematics community. In our first year, we're aiming to increase our reach by launching the QED Discord (stay tuned!) as well as to organise events to meet others within the community and develop mentorship connections across mathematics.

2. Visibility: The UK mathematics scene is beginning to move in a positive direction for visibility of under-represented groups, and we want to actively work towards this for the LGBTQIA+ community. This will involve dedicated sessions at UK conferences, researcher profiles/interviewers that we post here and working with the maths societies to support activity for members within our community

3. Advocacy: It's not clear to both the mathematics community, nor the  societies that support them, what the queer experience is within the mathematics landscape. One of our long-term goals is to undertake a Experience Survey in the same vein as the joint IOP-RSC report (see here:). From this, we hope to provide a foundation that will allow us to advocate to improve the queer experience within mathematics nationally (and with any luck, internationally too)

Thank you to everyone who came to our big events!

1. Our BMC-BAMC 2025 Mini-Symposium: 1 year on from our initial formation at BAMC 2024 we ran a special symposium at the joint British Mathematical Colloquium & British Applied Mathematical Colloquium. Check out our Bluesky for some pictures!

2. The Queer Experience in Mathematics: The workshop brought together LGBTQ+-identifying mathematicians in the UK, especially those early in their careers. We intended that our programme would increase the internal visibility of community members to each other, providing them inspiration and channels for seeking support and building mentoring relationships. LGBTQ+ mathematicians also discussed what they believe are the priorities for support resources, policy changes, etc. needed by the community.