This research examines the gendered life histories and everyday nationalist practices of queer/LGBTQI+ subjects on Azerbaijani social media networks. I investigate queer communities with a particular interest in nationalist, militarist, anti-militarist and anti-nationalist queers. The research explores queer and LBGTQI+ perspectives that are subject to a larger Azerbaijani heteronormative nationalist culture while focusing especially on queer expressions of nationalism on social media platforms. This project builds on the limited (but growing) research on queerness and masculinities in Azerbaijan and, therefore, explores queerness in relation to hegemonic masculinity in Azerbaijan with a new perspective on the problems of militarisation, war and violence.
This research project, therefore, contributes not only to the fields of nationalism, queerness, masculinity and gender but also their relation to the military and conflicts of countries not often discussed in Western academia. It intends to produce an intersectional analysis of LGBTQI+ and their relationship to the social order in Azerbaijan (through nationalism). Hence, this project will take an intersectional approach that considers the mutual constitutions, interdependencies, and transformations of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship while investigating how state violence in Azerbaijan oppresses the everyday lives of LGBTQI+ subjects. Methodologically, I aim to collect and analyse data from social media networks which were posted between September – December 2020 and August- October 2023. Finally, this project will be a direct result of nethnography in a digitalised world.