The Team

Pauline Balle is a pharmacist and doctoral researcher. Since completing her pharmacy studies at Philipps University in Marburg, she has been working part-time in a community pharmacy while pursuing her doctoral research. Her work focuses on the integration of sex and gender considerations into German medical guidelines, as well as on the legal frameworks that determine the collection of gender-sensitive data throughout the life cycle of medicinal products.

Eva Becher holds a degree in biology and obtained her PhD from the University of Münster (1998). She went on to study Consumer Health Care and Epidemiology at the Berlin School of Public Health (MSc 2021). From 2003 to 2010, she conducted research on women’s health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Since 2021, she has been a research associate at the OWL Faculty of Medicine at Bielefeld University, focusing on the operationalisation of gender for quantitative medical and population research and the analysis of guidelines with regard to the consideration of gender aspects.

Lyn Luca Berlin is a student in the Master’s program in Public Health at Bielefeld University and has been a research assistant in the Research Group for Gender-Sensitive Medicine since 2026. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Communication and Media Studies at the University of Rostock between 2021 and 2025. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree, he worked at the University Medical Center Rostock in the Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology.

Claudia Dammann is a qualified legal and notarial assistant. She brings many years of professional experience and expertise as an executive assistant. She initially worked at a renowned tax consultancy and auditing firm in Bielefeld and subsequently spent more than 25 years with a group of companies specializing in value-added marketing services.

Motivated by personal commitment, she joined the newly established Medical Faculty OWL at Bielefeld University in 2023 to support the development of the medical faculty. Claudia Dammann divides her time equally between the Secretariat of the Research Group for Gender-Sensitive Medicine, headed by Professor Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, and the Research Group of Anatomy and Cell Biology, led by Professor Björn Spittau.

Tobias Eggert is a medical student at Hannover Medical School (MHH) and has been a doctoral researcher in the Research Group for Gender-Sensitive Medicine at the Medical Faculty OWL since 2025. In his doctoral project, he investigates gender awareness among medical students as well as curricular and structural approaches to promoting gender and diversity competencies at medical faculties in Germany.

Claudia Herling is a design researcher specializing in gender and (digital) design, as well as the chair of the international Gender Design Network e. V. Since October 2025, she has been a research associate at Bielefeld University, working for the GenDiMedNet project. Prior to that, she spent seven years at the Lab for Socioinformatics at Heilbronn University. She has been publishing and teaching in the field of design for 20 years and is co-owner of the design studio digitale frische. Her research focuses in particular on gender and diversity in design, the design of digital systems and their societal impacts, as well as participatory design methods and co-design.

Awa Naghipour is a physician, research associate, and health advocate specializing in sex/gender- and discrimination-sensitive medicine. Her research and teaching focus on inclusive, critically reflective, and context-sensitive healthcare, with particular emphasis on health equity and the transfer of knowledge into educational, clinical, and health policy practice. After completing her medical degree at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and working clinically in internal medicine, she has been affiliated with the first German Chair of Sex and Gender-Sensitive Medicine at Bielefeld University since 2022. A central focus of her work is the question of how inclusive, sex/gender- and discrimination-sensitive clinical practice can be structurally embedded and ensured—e.g. at the institutional level through clinical practice guidelines. She is a co-initiator and co-founder of the non-profit organization Feministische Medizin e.V. (feminist medicine) and contributes to health policy development through her work in numerous (inter)national expert committees.

Sabine Oertelt-Prigione is specialized in Internal Medicine, holds a Master of Public Health, and is a certified systemic organizational consultant. Since 2017, she has held the Chair of Gender in Primary and Transmural Care at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and since 2021, she has also been Professor of Gender-Sensitive Medicine at Bielefeld University.

She has served as a member of the European Commission expert groups “Gendered Innovations 2” and “Gender and COVID-19”. She is currently a member of the Medical Committee of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) and of the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association.

Her research focuses on the implementation of gender-sensitive approaches in research, teaching, clinical practice, and health policy.

Sophie Stüve is a paramedic and medical student. After completing a voluntary social year (FSJ) in emergency medical services, she started studying medicine at the Medical School EWL at Bielefeld University in 2022. Since 2024, she has been supporting the Research Group for Sex- and Gender-Sensitive Medicine as a student assistant.

Ute Wenning is a Research Associate and project coordinator within the BMFTR funding directive “Interactive Technologies for Gender-Specific Health (GeGe)”, where she coordinated GenDiMedNet. After several years coordinating the North Rhine-Westphalia state initiative DigiHealthStart.NRW, she is currently conducting research in sex- and gender-sensitive medicine with a focus on the systemic transfer of evidence-based digital health innovations, the improvement of data collection in healthcare, and the development of interdisciplinary networks spanning research, healthcare delivery, and policy.

Laura Wortmann is a physician and Research Associate. After studying human medicine at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and working in biomonitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic, she joined the Chair of Sex- and Gender-Sensitive Medicine at Bielefeld University in 2022. In addition, she is pursuing an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Gender Studies at the University of Freiburg.

Her current areas of interest include gender and diversity sensitivity in research and teaching, interdisciplinarity—particularly between medicine and the humanities and social sciences—and science communication.