Research Training Group

Assia Alkass

Assia Alkass is a sociologist who studies the phenomenology of pornography. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the experience of gender, sexuality, and desire in the consumption of pornography. She studies the bodily-lived aspect of adult viewers' receptions of pornography, which has been less frequently addressed in contemporary studies of pornography consumption behavior. Experience-based interviews (Jäger and König 2017) will be conducted in order to gain access to people's lived experiences of gender and sexuality, thus clarifying whether one's own gender is, indeed, especially evident in moments of lust and desire (see Gugutzer 2001)—or if people also feel resistance to the societal arrangement of genders.

Before entering the doctoral program at the RTG, Assia Alkass was a scientific staff member in the Research and Teaching Unit for Gender Sociology at Bielefeld University's Faculty of Sociology. During this time, she also served as the program coordinator of the Gender Studies master's program. For her bachelor's degree, she explored representations of gender in film  and continued this inquiry while earning her master's degree in Gender Studies, which she completed in 2019 with a thesis on gender in occult horror films. This led to a more extensive analysis, which she is now continuing in her doctoral dissertation.

Merle Boedler

Merle Boedler is doing her doctorate in sociology. In her dissertation project, Merle Boedler is researching gender ambiguity and investigating processes of subjectivation in the context of socio-cultural change. Gender ambiguity is understood as a phenomenon that is relevant for various queer modes of existence (e.g. non-binary and genderqueer people, but also lesbians, butches or fags), whose concrete meaning is however strongly dependent on historical stituatedness and socio-cultural developments. Using a combination of narrative-biographical (Schütze 1977, 1983) and experiential interviews (König/Jäger 2017), “gender stories” of queer people of different ages are collected. These are analyzed in terms of how gender ambiguity is experienced under specific socio-cultural conditions, lived in bodily and discursive practices and what experiences are made with it. The question is how ambiguity is constituted in each individual entanglement of these dimensions of gender. Historical changes in relation to gender ambiguity and the associated transformations in modes of subjectivation will be examined. Theoretically, the project links Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body with Foucault's genealogy as well as respective connections in Feminist Theory and Queer and Trans Studies. In this way, the demand for a critical phenomenology (e.g. Simms/Stawarska 2013, Weiss/Murphy/Salamon 2020) is to be met.

Merle Boedler studied Social Work and Gender & Queer Studies in Cologne. Merle Boedler wrote her master's thesis on the relevance of (body) phenomenology for gender studies. The current project builds on the ideas and theses developed there and attempts to implement them empirically. Merle Boedler's focal points are: Feminist theory, Gender/Queer/Trans Studies, body phenomenological approaches, theories of subjectivation as well as Gender and Queer Studies in Social Work.

Lidia Bohn

Lidia Bohn is a sports scientist whose research focuses on the sociology of gender in sports, phenomena related to fringe sports, as well as ethnography. In ethnographic field research, she uses Quidditch as an example to examine how participants in a gender-inclusive sport deal with gender.

Lidia Bohn studied cultural anthropology and sports science at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen, as well as the social sciences of sport at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. She was then employed in the area of gender equality in the sports associations sector.

Johanna Budke

Johanna Budke is a health scientist studying premature menopause, defined by medicine as a phenomenon in which a person's last menstrual period occurs before the age of 40. Her dissertation project utilizes interviews, while drawing on theoretical approaches based in sociology of knowledge and phenomenology as well as theoretical considerations of experiences and narratives of illness. Through this approach, she aims to examine what it means for people to experience menopause before the age of 40 and what effects the unexpected hormonal changes have on lived experiences and being-in-the-world. The doctoral project thus addresses a research desideratum in the field of basic research in the health sciences. At the center of the grounded theory study is the question of the physical and social experiences of people who have entered menopause earlier.

Before joining the research training group in 2021, Johanna Budke was the director of a community health promotion project of the City of Bielefeld from 2020 to 2021. From 2017 to 2019, she was a scientific staff member in the project "Vernetzung und Qualifizierung von Akteur*innen der Qualitätsentwicklung auf Landesebene" (Networking and qualification of quality development actors at the state level) in the Prevention and Health Promotion Working Group at Bielefeld University. Prior to that, Johanna Budke studied Health Communication (BA) and Public Health (MA) at Bielefeld University.

Alice Farneti

Alice Farneti is a PhD candidate focusing on ethnographic research and gender sociology. Her dissertation examines the experiences of feminist activists as they navigate the institutionalization of their struggles. She conducted her fieldwork in Quebec, where a feminist mobilization has brought the issue of sexual violence in universities to the forefront. In response to this activism, the Quebec government introduced legislation requiring all higher education institutions to adopt policies against sexual violence. While this law represents a significant achievement for the feminist movement, it also poses challenges by exposing activists to potential institutional co-optation of their struggle. Quebec thus provides a compelling setting to explore the complexities, tensions, and contradictions surrounding the process of institutionalization of a feminist movement against sexual violence. Through an in-depth look at activists’ experiences, this research aims to contribute to the understanding of institutional resistance to feminist demands for inclusion and equality in organizational contexts.

Alice Farneti studied Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Bologna. Before joining the Research Training Group, she was a scholarship holder at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology. Her research interests include gender-based violence, gender institutional and organizational theory, institutional ethnography, and phenomenological approaches to institutionalization.

Raisa Ferrer Pizarro

Raisa Ferrer Pizarro is a PhD candidate in sociology whose research focuses on gender and health. In her doctoral dissertation, she examines how medical-patient interactions and intertwined large-scale inequalities shape women’s experience in a public health facility after an induced abortion in a context characterized by precariousness and abortion illegality. She hopes to build upon existing literature on gendered structural violence by answering this question.

Peru is one of the countries with the lowest public health expenditure in Latin America and the Caribbean, and abortion is penalized there, except in the case of a medical emergency. Drawing from sociological phenomenology, Raisa analyzes the case of a northern Peru region with one of the country's highest maternal mortality rates. She focuses on the middle level of health systems (the healthcare center) and the micro level (the relationship between doctor and patient) while identifying the broader landscape shaped by race-gender subordination, the promises of neoliberalism, and sociomoral regimes.

Before joining the Research Training Group “Gender as Experience” at Bielefeld University, Raisa worked as a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP), a research assistant at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), and a consultant for various non-profits tackling gender-based violence and reproductive injustice. She completed her bachelor's degree in Communication studies at PUCP and a master's in geo-governance at Potsdam University as a DAAD scholarship holder.

Katharina Goebel

Katharina Goebel is a doctoral candidate in sociology. Her dissertation project is dedicated to examining how lesbian and bisexual women in Germany over the age of 60 live (and experience). These women, on the one hand, were and are barely visible in society both in past and present. On the other hand, over the course of their lives, one can observe clear social developments toward an increased acceptance of non-heteronormative lifestyles, while the heterosexual matrix continues to prevail. This background raises questions concerning experiences and experiencing of past and present: How is living (and experiencing) narrated, with its contradictions, ruptures and (social) developments? What relationship between experiencing and experiences can be discerned here and to which extent do the women sketch out a coherent identity in their narratives? Katharina Goebel will investigate this by conducting narrative, experience-based interviews (Rosenthal 1995, 2010; Jäger/König 2017). In this way, the queer-phenomenologically oriented research project sheds light on experiences and life stories that so far have received insufficient social and academic attention. By addressing the question of how these experienced biographies with their (im)possibilities of “unlived lives” (von Weizsäcker) are narrated, the research project also contributes to the field of biographical research.

Katharina Goebel studied Educational Science (B.A.) at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Childhood, Youth, Social Services (M.A.) at the University of Wuppertal as well as Gender Studies (M.A.) at the University of Bielefeld. She worked for several years as a research assistant in the Socialization Research Group at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where her research interests included the formation of transnational families and friendships as well as adoption mediation. She is particularly interested in lesbian-queer modes of existence, their conditions, discursivizations and especially their experiences.

Ru Kim Haase

Ru Kim Haase is a physical education teacher researching inclusive school sports for trans*, inter* and non-binary (TIN*) pupils. In their dissertation project, they would first like to look at the experiences and (embodied) experiencing of both TIN* pupils and PE teachers in body-centered and gender-binary PE lessons, focusing on intersectional factors. Building on this, Ru Kim Haase would like to design a training concept for (prospective) physical education teachers focused on inclusive teaching with special consideration of TIN* students. Their cumulative dissertation project draws on various theoretical points of reference (Queer Theory, Trans Studies, professionalization theories, Queer Pedagogy). In the sub-studies, various methods from the field of qualitative social research are used for data collection and evaluation. 

Ru Kim Haase has been a research fellow at Bielefeld University since 2022 and teaches in the degree programs for the teaching qualification in physical education. They studied sport, nutritional science and home economics as well as educational science at the University of Applied Sciences and the University of Münster (Master of Education) and have since been focusing on the interests of queer people in sport both professionally and in their volunteer work.

Sophie Halcour

Sophie Halcour is doing her doctorate in sociology. Her dissertation examines violent practices in a gynecological context, with a particular focus on the entanglement of experiences of violence and gender in gynecology. This ethnographic project uses the method of participant observation to investigate, among other things, the violent nature of gynecological processes that operate at the level of the self-evident and the symbolic. The initial aim is to provide a close description of everyday gynecological practices with a focus on their naturalizing and gendering implications. By analyzing narrated experiences of violence in gynecological practice, insights will also be gained into the different ways in which violence is experienced. Finally, based on these empirical results, a concept of violence in the gynecological context will be developed which draws from existing sociological concepts of power and violence and understands gynecological violence as a form of reproductive injustice (see Ross 2021).

Sophie Halcour studied medicine in Cologne, Medellín (Colombia) and Guadalajara (Mexico). After earning her degree, she initially began further training as a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy before joining the master’s program in Gender & Queer Studies at the University of Cologne. She wrote her master's thesis on the experiences and practices of queer pregnant and birthing people in the obstetric context. Together with Sarah Dionisius, she will take on an external teaching assignment at the University of Cologne in the winter semester 2024/25 on the topic of reproductive politics and resistant practices.

Filareti Karkalia

Filareti Karkalia is a PhD student in literature with a focus on gender studies. In her dissertation, she analyses the traces of Antigone and Antigone's mode of existence in the female characters and voices in texts by German and Greek-speaking female authors of the ‘70s and ’80s. The selected authors put into words the journey of women from invisibility to visibility through their protagonists. The subject of the literary texts to be explored is the desire for a new, liberated female identity, as well as sexuality and corporeality, the position of the female subject in the political processes and ferment of the time, in which the New Women's Movement in particular plays a major role.

The questions, the necessities and the demands raised by the women of that time concerning gender, identity, corporeality and sexuality have not yet been established or answered, let alone resolved in our societies today. And although the level of development differs from society to society, the content, concerns and attitudes raised by Antigone are still essentially relevant and her demands remain largely unfulfilled. The self-realisation of femininities still cannot be taken for granted.

Before joining the Research Training Group, Filareti Karkalia first studied History and Archaeology and then German Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens. As part of her master’s programme ‘German Literature: Greek-German Relations in Literature, Culture and Art’ at the same Faculty, she also worked as a tutor. She studied at Bielefeld University as part of the Erasmus scholarship programme.

Annika Klanke

Annika Klanke is a literary scientist specialized in gender studies. In her doctoral dissertation, she examines the aesthetics, form, and politics of contemporary feminist essay writing. The project refers to the current strong demand for a type of essayistic text production in feminist essay writing that combines autobiographical and theoretical modes of writing, thus following factual modes of narration. Thematically, this type of text often revolves around gender-specific aspects of subjectification. At the same time, however, they also problematize the damage done by capitalism and colonialism as well as the complex interaction between them. In these texts, the often-subtle effects of these mechanisms of dominance become especially legible through the ways in which bodies and relationship experiences are made literary. Using the tools of literary studies, selected examples of this type of essay writing will be analyzed with regard to their composition and their sociopolitical implications. With a subject-theoretical perspective, the role of narrated experiences within literary processes of subjectification will be investigated as well as how this popular form of narration helps to shape contemporary discourses of (identity) politics.

Before joining the Research Training Group, Annika Klanke was a research assistant at the Technical University of Dortmund (Faculty of Cultural Studies, 2019-2021). From 2018 to 2019, she worked as a caregiver for people with high degrees of care dependency at ambulante Dienste e.V. in Berlin. She completed her bachelor's degree in German Studies, Music and Theater in Bremen and Vienna (2009-2013) and her Master of Arts (MA) in German Literature and German Studies at HU Berlin and Cornell University Ithaca (2013-2018).

Maren Lange

Maren Lange is doing her doctorate in educational science on illegal abortions in West Germany before 1976, focusing on the reconstruction of the lived and narrated biographical experiences of those who carried out abortions at the time: 'angel makers' and 'helpers' (Pross 1971). The investigation of the contradictory and complex interaction of social conditions and one's own lived life focuses on the significance of individual experiences for social discontinuities, persistence or change. Maren Lange is interested in biopolitics and the interaction of reproductive politics, gender relations and subjectivation processes. She examines the socialization of sexuality and reproduction in the context of symbolic and material hegemonic power relations, which are particularly effective on an embodied, partly existential level. With the question of subjectivation processes and agency, it is not only of interest - in the sense of Judith Butler or Michel Foucault, among others - how bodies are governed and materialized, but also why bodies are governed, regulated, controlled, moralized and stigmatized in this way, a question raised by Silvia Federici, among others. From a genealogical perspective, the historical subject matter has implications for current social debates surrounding abortion, structural and symbolic violence, reproductive justice and debates surrounding production and reproduction.

Maren Lange studied educational science at the University of Münster (M.A.) and environmental science (diploma) at the University of Lüneburg. She is a licensed social pedagogue (B.A. HAW Hamburg), systemic consultant and social therapist. She has worked as a social pedagogue in various fields including sexualized and gender-specific violence, in youth education and most recently in a pregnancy counselling centre, with her work including pregnancy conflict counselling.

Mascha Liening

Mascha Liening is doing her doctorate in political theory. Her dissertation project examines the constitution and transformation of corporealities as experiences following Michel Foucault and aims to make narratives and practices around corporeality visible in order to identify transformation potentials in contingent orders. Her research focuses on political theories and the history of ideas, especially theories of science, theories of democracy and constructivist and critical perspectives on topics such as power, resistance, violence and diversity.

Mascha Liening is a research fellow at the BGHS and works in the field of political education surrounding discrimination, intersectionality and right-wing extremism. She is a member of the working group for the advanced training master's program “CoVio - Collective Violence” of the Research Network Collective Violence of the FernUniversität in Hagen and RuhrUniversität Bochum. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Department of Comparative Political Science at the FernUniversität in Hagen. She studied Solitical science (B.A.) and Theory and Comparison of Political Systems (M.A.) with a focus on Political Theory and Comparison at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Edith Otero Quezada

Edith Otero Quezada studies Inter-American Studies. In her PhD Project she analyzes the intersections between body, gender, and emotions during the process of political participation. As a case study, she is currently researching the recent political context of Nicaragua. For that aim, she is developing a dynamic and interdisciplinary framework of analysis that combines contemporary phenomenology, the affect turn and decolonial feminist perspective of Latin America. Besides her current project, Edith is also interested in political subjectivity, (post)memory, guerrilla’s movements, masculinities and the construction of horizontal and activist methodologies.

Edith Otero Quezada studied M.A. Inter-American Studies at the same university and holds a B.A. in Sociology from Universidad Centroamericana (UCA-Nicaragua). Edith was a scholarship holder of the German Foundation Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (2017-2020), holding several awards. Most notably the Award to the Excellence in Scientific Research, given by the Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium) and Universidad Centroamericana (UCA-Nicaragua). In 2013, Edith received the National Award to the Young Scientific Talent given by Academy of Science of Nicaragua for her bachelor thesis.

Jannis Ruhnau

Jannis Ruhnau is a doctoral candidate in sociology. His dissertation project explores body-self-relationships developed in narrative interviews of trans* and non-binary people as well as lesbian cis women who lift weights. The research project is theoretically situated between phenomenological and post-structural concepts and submits the ways in which bodies are seen and felt to a reading informed by theories of subjectivation. An individual methodological framework is conceptualized within the project to analyse body-self-relationships in narrative interviews. This framework places its focus on the interplay between the narrative level and the level of the interview interaction and on this basis analyzes the emergence of a social experience which transcends the content of what is said.

The analysis reveals weightlifting as a possibility for relating to oneself in a way that generates the imagination of a strong and self-sufficient self which can separate itself from painful experiences of discrimination. The body, which has been normatively shaped by the gaze of others during the socialization process, can be sensed in new ways by turning to oneself. This not only changes the way the body feels, but also the way bodies are seen. At the same time, new perspectives always remain confined to the hegemonic order - working on one's own seeing and sensing thus becomes a daily routine that finds its practical implementation in weightlifting.

Jannis Ruhnau studied sociology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. He is currently a research assistant for the Department of Gender Sociology at Bielefeld University under Prof. Dr. Diana Lengersdorf.

Ell Rutkat

Ell Rutkat is a social scientist with a focus on gender studies and queer theory. For their PhD project Ell Rutkat conducted qualitative interviews and spoke with trans*, non-binary, inter*, agender people and (queer) cis women about their experiences of genital fluids, focusing especially on the phenomenon of “squirting”. Based on the narrations of the interviewees Ell Rutkat investigates into the bodily and gendered experience of squirting and other (sexual) practices with genital fluids. The main research interest is about the intricacy of gender and sex(uality) as well as the process of change they undergo within the biographies of the interviewees: How is their gendered being in the world related to the sexual practices they live and their experiences of genital fluids? How are these experiences constituted by historical conditions, the production of medical knowledge, and social norms regarding gender and sex(uality)?

Ell Rutkat specialized in "Culture and History" in the BA program "Liberal Arts and Sciences" at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. A year-long study abroad at the University of Barcelona led Ell Rutkat to the "Estudis de dones, Gènere i ciutadania" and, later, back to the University of Freiburg for the MA in Gender Studies. Ell Rutkat's master's thesis was about gender, bodily shame, and the embodiment of social norms around genitals.

Vanessa Lara Ullrich

Vanessa Lara Ullrich is a Phd Candidate in Political Theory and the History of Political Thought. Her research project provides a critique of the political function of desire in contemporary social and political movements. Drawing on Marx, her research critically probes what is often taken for granted in today’s movements as desire’s revolutionary potential by tracing articulations of desire at different historical conjunctures. This analysis will help substantiate a materialist understanding of desire that goes beyond the binary of liberation and oppression, and instead delves into desire’s hidden abode in the capitalist mode of production.

Vanessa Lara Ullrich is Research Associate at the Research Graduate School “Gender as Experience” at the University of Bielefeld. She studied Psychology and Politics at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt (B.Sc.) and at the University of Oxford (M.Sc.). Her main research interests are critical theory, feminist theory and social philosophy. Before she joined the Graduate School, Vanessa Lara Ullrich worked amongst others as Policy Officer for Migration and Forced Displacement at the European Union External Action Service in Brussels and as an Expert for Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

Jessica Alessandra Wagner

Jessica Alessandra Wagner is a PhD student in sociology researching female modes of existence in virtual space using the example of female gamers and streamers on the streaming platform twitch.

The basis of her research interest is to look at how female modes of existence are constituted and possibly transformed at the fluid boundary between virtual and non-virtual space. A particular focus lies on the interweaving of humans and technology and of virtual and non-virtual bodies.

The project combines critical-materialist gender studies, body sociology, and perspectives from New Materialism. It is rooted in a theoretical interest in expanding existing perspectives on the materiality of gender and an endeavor to further develop methodological approaches for qualitative research at the interface of virtual and non-virtual worlds as well as virtual and non-virtual bodies.

Jessica Wagner studied Social Work (B.A.) and Gender Studies (M.A.) at Bielefeld University. In her master's thesis, titled “My Avatar, My Choice - Female Gamers and their Avatars”, she presented an empirical study of female modes of existence and (posthuman) bodies.

Jessica Wagner specializes in qualitative social research. In addition to her research interests, she is focused on the field of science communication.

Before joining the Research Training Group, she worked as an education officer and lecturer for gender-reflective and anti-discriminatory pedagogy.

Ivo Zender

Ivo Zender is a literary scholar concerned with the nexus of corporeality, gender and textuality in trans narratives. Their dissertation examines the poetics of transgender corporealities in contemporary german literature. It asks about the literary modes of appearance as well as the formative and formal principles used to convey narratives of trans life and experience. Their guiding questions are: Which aesthetic strategies do contemporary trans narratives pursue (or not) to produce intelligible gendered subjects and which textual and bodily understandings are developed in the process? The project aims to systematically analyze the structure and narrative style of selected (auto)ficitional texts and to inquire how these texts create a body through narrative. The theoretization of the relationship between the transgendered body and it’s narrative textuality is central to the project. Thus, the project refers to those analytical horizons – especially charted within Trans Studies (e.g. Salamon 2010) – that utilize theories of affect, materiality and neophenomenology to put the gendered body at the heart of the theoretical debate.

Ivo Zender studied Political Science and Spanish Filology at Universität Trier and Complutense University of Madrid (B.A.) as well as European Literature at Humboldt-Universität of Berlin (M.A.). Their Master’s thesis addresses processes of reading and narrating transgendered bodies. Their research focus is on Gender/Queer/Trans Studies, trans narratives, corporeality and textuality and LBTIQA* literature.