Every June 28, the International LGBTIQA+ Pride Day is celebrated in commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, as a reaction to police violence and discrimination. This date is considered the starting point of the modern movement in defense of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer and asexual people. Since then, the recognition of multiple rights and freedoms has been achieved. However, major gaps, a lack of visibility, social barriers and rights violations still exist around the world.
Science and research are essential tools to improve people's quality of life. In this context, research in psychology is key to building inclusive environments and fostering social transformation that supports the well-being of all people.
On this Pride Day 2026, we share 8 reflections from CIMCYC research staff who talk to us about the importance of having an intersectional perspective and valuing diversity in research. At the same time, some of these researchers also share their personal testimonies about what it means to be LGBTIQA+ in the scientific context.
Francisca López Torrecillas - Researcher and Full Professor at the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment
Research in psychology has the responsibility to understand human diversity in all its complexity. Incorporating sexual and gender diversity into research strengthens the principles of equality and inclusion and improves the scientific quality of studies, by favoring the generation of more accurate, representative and applicable knowledge to social reality. Experiences, needs and vulnerability factors vary among different groups; therefore, their consideration is essential to avoid biases, identify inequalities and design more effective interventions.
Diversity enriches research questions, broadens the perspectives from which a phenomenon is analyzed and favors a more rigorous and socially committed science. Moving toward inclusive research constitutes a necessary step to promote psychological well-being, equity and respect for the rights of all people.
CTS-436 Group: Psychosocial and cross-cultural aspects of health and illness / Francisco Javier Olivas - Predoctoral researcher
We are developing a doctoral thesis on grief, suicide, aging and end of life in sexual and gender minorities (LGTBIAQ+ population). The existence of this thesis at UGR highlights that the public university can (and must) investigate areas scarcely explored until now, contexts in which LGTBIphobia also impacts. This circumstance has been highlighted by what, to the best of our knowledge, has been the first study published on grief in lesbians, gays and bisexuals carried out in Spain.
Scientific research is a fundamental tool to bring visibility to little-known forms of violence and foster a more egalitarian society for those of us who are part of a sexual and gender minority. The fight for equality also takes place through pioneering and public scientific research.
Germán Cipriani - Predoctoral research staff, cognitive neuroscience
In this LGTBIQA+ Pride Month, I consider it important to ask ourselves about the underrepresentation and lack of visibility of non-cisgender individuals, including non-binary and trans people, in the university, especially in decision-making and leadership spaces, as well as in those of scientific production. Diversity must not only be celebrated and respected, but also reflected in who participates, conducts research and occupies positions of responsibility within our institutions.
Moving toward a more inclusive academia requires creating real conditions so that non-cisgender individuals can develop their professional careers, be visible and participate fully at all levels of university institutions.
Human Sexuality Laboratory Team - LabSex UGR
Research in psychology cannot advance without incorporating an intersectional vision that considers the diverse ways we relate, express and identify ourselves. At LabSex UGR, we work with this perspective because sexual, emotional and relational experiences are not homogeneous: they vary according to sexual orientation, gender identity and other factors. When science uses a single majority experience as a reference, it leaves out part of the population and generates less representative findings. Science is rigorous when it recognizes and incorporates the plurality of experiences it aims to explain.
Our team has consolidated a line of work that replicates and extends studies conducted solely on cisheterosexual populations to other populations. What began as a specific line has become one of the team's pillars that runs through the design of our studies. Incorporating diversity is not only an ethical matter, it also improves the quality of research.
Carlos Pérez Amorós - Predoctoral research staff, LabSex UGR
As a researcher, one of the experiences that has marked me the most was receiving, in a prestigious scientific journal, a request to justify why we were analyzing for the first time the relationship between two variables in a sample of same-gender couples. The implicit question seemed to be: why start here and not with the "reference" population? The reverse approach is rarely questioned, because most studies are conducted first on cisheterosexual populations.
This experience well summarizes how certain realities continue to occupy a peripheral position in scientific production and is often accompanied by the difficulty of finding prior literature, also within the field of human sexuality. Being part of the community as a researcher implies being aware of these absences and contributing, through one's own research, to ensuring that many life experiences are recognized and do not appear as exceptions, but rather as a legitimate part of scientific knowledge.
Psychologist and predoctoral researcher
Recognizing the intersectionalities that cross people's lives is fundamental for research in psychology and social sciences. Sexual identity (and other types of identity) is a determining factor for our way of inhabiting the world, relating and behaving.
For a long time, those of us who do not fit into social molds have been not only stigmatized but also pathologized. For this reason, responsible professional and research practice must value diversity, so that unnecessary suffering is never again caused to those who do not fit into what society wants to impose.
Danna Galván Hernández - Postdoctoral research staff, Social Change Psychology Lab
My research in psychology is what it is because of who I am: someone who cares about how to build bridges from activism in polarized societies. To achieve this, it is urgent to apply a real LGBTIQA+ and intersectional perspective. We must be humble with this concept: adding gender as an isolated variable does not make a study intersectional. It requires looking at complex identities without reducing them to a single label. If we do not approach this integrative perspective, science will remain partial and blind to peripheral realities.
I always say that what we research is inseparable from who we are. The supposed objectivity under which we scientists hide does not exist (sorry). The questions you ask yourself, which groups you approach (and which ones you do not) and how you do it, give you away, my friend.
Researcher in social psychology
Including the LGTBIQ+ community in our research leads to a normalization of people's diverse realities. Failing to do so pushes them into otherness, relegating them to the "other" boxes, to participations eliminated for not fitting the inclusion criteria.
If we want to research human behavior, we cannot continue excluding and rendering invisible a part of humanity. Furthermore, greater representation will help reduce the pathologization of a group of people that continues to be persecuted in numerous parts of the world.