BB: Global Rights, Local Applications: Doing Disablity and LGBTI activisms in Bulgaria

This talk provides an overview of my research on disability rights activism and LGBTI activism in Bulgaria. It brings together the legal, political, and socio-cultural aspects that aAect activism in the two spheres. The talk highlights the importance for both spheres of activism to challenge dominant narratives of (national) belonging and (re)prodiction in Bulgaria. It examines how activist strategies in both spheres of activism challenge dominant narratives by drawing on and exapning established notions of kinship and the person.

Kostadin Karavasilev is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Münster. Kostadin’s research investigates the strategies that activists for the rights of people with disabilities, specifically the rights of people with mental illnesses, and activists for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people use to eOect goals of legal, social, and political transformation in Bulgaria.