LEADING TO TRANSGRESS: QUEERING COLLEGE STUDENT LEADERSHIP IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
Leadership identity development represents a foundational area within college student development theory. The LID Model (Komives et al., 2005, 2006) has served as a prominent framework for understanding how college students develop as leaders. However, with an increasing number of college students identifying as LGBTQ+ and growing calls for inclusive theory, questions emerge about whether existing models adequately capture the experiences of queer and trans* (QT) students. This study employed phenomenological methods to investigate how QT college students experience leadership identity development and how their intersecting identities shape this developmental process. Through semi-structured interviews with 16 QT student leaders (QTSL) across diverse institutional contexts, this qualitative study examined participants’ lived experiences. Data analysis revealed five major themes: nuanced expansion of the LID Model, impact of intersectionality on leadership, challenges to QT leadership authority, strengths born from marginalized lived experiences, and the critical role of mentorship. Findings illuminate how QTSL navigate leadership spaces that are oriented toward cisgender and heterosexual identities, requiring continuous negotiation of identity disclosure, authenticity, and leadership authority. The findings reveal critical gaps in how the LID Model accounts for marginalized identities. QT students described leadership development as inseparable from QT identity development, with coming out and transitioning functioning simultaneously as leadership acts and catalysts for further development. Intersectionality emerged not merely as a barrier but as creating qualitatively distinct developmental pathways, particularly for QT students of color. The study demonstrates that centering marginalized perspectives reveals developmental complexities obscured by identity-neutral frameworks. Practical implications include the need for leadership programs to actively create space for identity exploration as leadership work, recognize coming out and transitioning as forms of leadership labor, and develop explicitly inclusive pedagogical approaches. Theoretically, the study extends leadership identity development scholarship by demonstrating how QT perspectives can productively complicate existing models. The dissertation concludes with directions for future research centering diverse QT experiences and examining leadership development within contemporary contexts.
LEADING TO TRANSGRESS: QUEERING COLLEGE STUDENT LEADERSHIP IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
Leadership identity development represents a foundational area within college student development theory. The LID Model (Komives et al., 2005, 2006) has served as a prominent framework for understanding how college students develop as leaders. However, with an increasing number of college students identifying as LGBTQ+ and growing calls for inclusive theory, questions emerge about whether existing models adequately capture the experiences of queer and trans* (QT) students. This study employed phenomenological methods to investigate how QT college students experience leadership identity development and how their intersecting identities shape this developmental process. Through semi-structured interviews with 16 QT student leaders (QTSL) across diverse institutional contexts, this qualitative study examined participants’ lived experiences. Data analysis revealed five major themes: nuanced expansion of the LID Model, impact of intersectionality on leadership, challenges to QT leadership authority, strengths born from marginalized lived experiences, and the critical role of mentorship. Findings illuminate how QTSL navigate leadership spaces that are oriented toward cisgender and heterosexual identities, requiring continuous negotiation of identity disclosure, authenticity, and leadership authority. The findings reveal critical gaps in how the LID Model accounts for marginalized identities. QT students described leadership development as inseparable from QT identity development, with coming out and transitioning functioning simultaneously as leadership acts and catalysts for further development. Intersectionality emerged not merely as a barrier but as creating qualitatively distinct developmental pathways, particularly for QT students of color. The study demonstrates that centering marginalized perspectives reveals developmental complexities obscured by identity-neutral frameworks. Practical implications include the need for leadership programs to actively create space for identity exploration as leadership work, recognize coming out and transitioning as forms of leadership labor, and develop explicitly inclusive pedagogical approaches. Theoretically, the study extends leadership identity development scholarship by demonstrating how QT perspectives can productively complicate existing models. The dissertation concludes with directions for future research centering diverse QT experiences and examining leadership development within contemporary contexts.
