The Committee on Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Studies at the University of Arizona was formed in the Spring of 1993, inspired by the provocative intellectual issues raised by Donna Haraway's visit as a Rockefeller Humanities Resident Scholar, and has been dedicated to interdisciplinary intellectual community development since its inception. Authorized by the Provost, the Committee has pursued a form of institutionalization that could take this interdisciplinarity into account. Rather than attempting to follow the norm of growth from committee to program to department, we have embraced the flexibility of our status as a university-wide committee. On Oct 11, 2007, the Committee was formally re-established as the UA Institute for LGBT Studies.

We have attracted substantial ongoing funding from all four Arts and Sciences colleges (Social and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities, Sciences, and Fine Arts) as well as from the university-wide office of the Vice President for Research. Faculty leadership (Committee Coordinators) has come from Women's Studies, History, and Media Arts. Active participants (Committee members) have come from departments across all four colleges (including English, French and Italian, Anthropology, Art, Geography and Regional Development, Political Science, Sociology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Art History). We have worked closely with Geography and Regional Development, Anthropology and Mexican American Studies on a project-specific basis. We have undertaken several curriculum and programming projects with the sciences. Numerous departments and programs have regularly offered financial support for our activities.