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Stephen Thomas Whittle

A co-founder of Press For Change (PFC www.pfc.org.uk) the UK's transgender lobby group, Stephen has been the organisation’s Head of Legal Services for over 25 years, running and training a team of volunteers providing free legal advice to transgender people and those who work with them. In 2005 he was a founder member and later Chair of Transgender Europe. He has been researching and writing about the law and transgender people for over 30 years, including being a co-author of the Yogyakarta Principles on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights.
Institution
Manchester Metropolitan University
Job Title
Professor Emeritus of Equalities Law

In 2007 Stephen was the first non-doctor and the first Trans person to be elected President of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). One of his proudest moments (other than marrying his wife in 2005) was in 2009, when the WPATH membership voted, unanimously, for Human Rights to be at the heart of the WPATH International Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People v.7.

He has advised the UK government on implementing gender recognition legislation and full protection in all aspects of life in the Equality Act 2010. He has also advised on transgender law to the Scottish, Irish, Italian, Japanese, and South African governments, and to the European Union, the Council of Europe and the European Commission. He advises lawyers and writes court briefs for courts across the world.  As well as teaching and research, Stephen acts an expert witness, in Court, on matters relating to Trans lives, LGBT families, privacy rights, and asylum. He regularly writes country reports for the UK’s Immigration courts addressing LGBT concerns, fear of persecution, and the mental health of asylum seekers. Stephen has recently served on the UK’s NHS Gender Identity Services Clinical Strategic Commissioning Group for the Department of Health, and was a member of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, Oversight Case Review Committee for six years. In 2015, he was appointed as special advisor to the Parliamentary Women & Equalities Committee Inquiry into Transgender Equality. He has also more recently contributed to research on discrimination towards members of the Dalit community in the UK’s South Asian Diaspora, and a project evaluating the impact of being Dalit on law students and young lawyers in India.

Stephen has received many awards for his academic and voluntary work, including a Lambda Literary Award as co-editor (with Susan Stryker) of The Transgender Studies Reader. In 2005 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE, 2005) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for his work with the British Government on transgender rights.