Queer Collaborations

Queer Collaborations (QC or QC's) is a national Australian queer conference. The conference is held annually, usually in July. The largest conferences have attracted 300-400 delegates.

It is often referred to as a tertiary student conference, as the majority of delegate attendance is funded through student unions, however there are no restrictions against non-students attending through self-admition. The conference has traditionally been supported by the National Union of Students of Australia (NUS) and has used the NUS Standing orders, but officially the conference is autonomous.

History
The conference began in 1991 as a one day meeting of students from universities around Sydney. Eventually QC expanded to its current format of a one-week national conference.

A challenge to the conference occurred in 2001 in Newcastle, when a political dispute caused the conference floor to split. Many of the delegates left the conference, and formed their own conference in a bar down the street.

In 2010, the University of Woollongong barely won the bid to host QC against Monash University (Clayton) in a vote of 62 to 60.

In 2020, QC was held entirely online for the first time, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The University of Melbourne (who had previously won the bid for 2020) successfully made another bid to host QC in 2021 with the aid of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.