research interests
Feminist, Social & Cultural Theory
Queer, Trans & Critical Disability Studies
Questions of the Human, Temporality & Emotions
Postmodernism & Posthumanism
Non-dualistic & Socio-material Approaches
current research projects
Forming Trans/sexuality at the Frankfurt Institute for Sexual Science (1973–2006)
Research project funded by the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts in the programme „Dimensionen der Kategorie Geschlecht – Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in Hessen“ | 2024-2026The project looks at the formation of trans(sexuality) in Germany, focussing on the Frankfurt Institute for Sexual Science as a pivotal site for creating understandings and regulations of trans/gender/sex/uality. The project provides a discourse-historical analysis of the Institute’s role in shaping and conditioning trans/itions in Germany. I investigate how notions of gender/sex, body, health and identity were formed and modified over time at the institute, and inform treatment models, clinical guidelines and practices, as well as law making and public views and debates on trans/itions to this day. I take the institute as a vantage point to trace lager shifts in the medicolegal regulation of gender/sex and contextualise current debates around trans(sexuality) and gender self-determination, especially with regards to the Self-Determination Act and recent changes in diagnostic manuals, medical guidelines and practices.
How Trans/itions Assemble | Arranging Gender/Sex
Ph.D. project in the Research Training Group Doing Transitions at Goethe University Frankfurt funded by the German Research Association | 2020-2024The project looks at how gender/sex transitions come about in Germany today. By transitions I generally mean ways of changing gender/sex that do not adhere to the medically assigned, legally enforced, static male/female dichotomy. I conducted a new materialist ethnography in Germany in 2020-2023: I interviewed transitioning individuals, collected data related to their transition processes, participated in community spaces, talked to activists, counsellors and medical practicioners, and studied medicolegal regulations.
I am interested in how gender/sex transitions are constituted and become evident as transitions: When is a transition a transition? How are its boundaries defined, and what gets excluded in the boundary-drawing-process? And what do these boundaries imply for the possibility to be/come trans/itioning? And for contemporary gender relations more broadly? To analyse how transitions are composed and conditioned, I employ a new materialist methodology and draw on relational understandings of differentiation from Karen Barad’s Agential Realism, Gilles Deleuze’s Difference-in-itself, and the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of Assemblage/Agencement.
“
“
the only way to get outside the dualisms
is to be-between, to pass between
”
GILLES DELEUZE & FÉLIX GUATTARI
academic publications
Why Every Gender Transition Is Always Already Late
Time & Society | forthcoming in 2024Interaktiv und intersektional:
Sexualbildung für Jugendliche mit dem Digitalspiel „Sibel’s Journey“
EN: Interactive and intersectional: Sex education for young people with the digital game "Sibel's Journey"
Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung | Together with Öykü İnal | forthcoming in 2024
Doing Gender Transitions. Geschlechterübergänge in neomaterialistischer Perspektive und ihr Potential für die Übergangsforschung
EN: Sex/Gender Transitions from a new materialist perspective and their potential for transition researchZeitschrift für Pädagogik Beiheft 68/2022 | p. 82 - 97 | 2022
Open Access Download
Neuer Materialismus
socialnet Lexikon.
Together with Tamara Schwertel | 2021 online
Die Covid-19-Pandemie bedroht alle. Geschützt werden nur einige
Femina Politica, Heft 2/2020: Politiken der Generativität und Reproduktive Rechte | p. 121 – 122 | Together with Magdalena Müssig | 2020Open Access Download
Familismus in der Coronakrise
Soziologiemagazin, Blogreihe 8: Soziologische Impulse während Corona. Together with Magdalena Müssig | 2020online
Copy Editor for
Trans & Care: Trans Personen zwischen Selbstsorge, Fürsorge und Versorgung
edited by Appenroth, Max, Castro Varela, María
| 2019transcript Verlag
Download the Introduction
other publications
I regularely write journalistic articles for different media and am a columnist for Neue Narrative Magazin. Topics include gender, the economic system, power relations, and our relationships to work, money and collectivity.
For a comprehensive list of journalistic publications, please check my torial profile.
For a comprehensive list of journalistic publications, please check my torial profile.
academic talks
CONFERENCE PAPERS
How do gender transitions unfold? A new materialist ethnography
Temporalities in the life course. International Conference “Relational Perspectives on the Life Course“, Goethe-University Frankfurt | 11/05/2023“If you are a woman through and through, you’re not supposed to be happy about being seen as a man” Or: What emotions and feelings do in gender transitions
Nordic Trans Studies Network Conference “From Transgender Rage to Trans Joy. Trans Studies through Affective Lens”, Tampere University, Finland | 24/02/2023“Why would I change my body if I'm not suffering?” The Role of Distress and Desire in Gender Transitions
G22 National Conference for Gender Studies (Sweden), Karlstad University, Sweden | 27/10/2022Doing Gender Transitions: Eine neomaterialistische Perspektive auf Geschlechter in Bewegung
EN: A new materialist perspective on gender in transition, Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS), Bielefeld University | 19/09/2022Doing Gender Transitions from a new materialist perspective
European Feminist Research Conference, University Milano-Bicocca | 16/06/2022Becoming what you ought to have always been: Nature/culture boundary-making in gender transitions
Mid-term Conference des ESA RN 33 (Women’s and Gender Studies), University Milano-Bicocca | 13/06/2022Übergangsforschung als Grenzziehungspraktiken anhand einer Studie zu Gendertransitionen
EN: Transition research as boundary-drawing practices based on a study on gender transitions28. DGfE Kongress ENT | GRENZ | UNGEN, 13-16 März 2022, University Bremen [online] | 15/03/2022
“Und dann konnte ich mich zum ersten Mal selbst so sehen.” – Zur Rolle von Un_sichtbarkeiten in Gendertransitionen
EN: “And then I could see myself like this for the first time.” – On the role of invisibilities in gender transitions8. Jahrestagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Geschlechterforschung „Ambivalente Un_Sichtbarkeiten“ [online] | 20/09/2021Gender Transitions as a Sociotechnical Issue
Conference Track Science and Technology. 15th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Barcelona [online] | 01/09/2021Crossing Boundaries: Gender Transitions as more-than-human-assemblages
Int. Conference “Frontiers of Humanity and Beyond: Towards new critical understandings of borders”, CHAM Centre for the Humanities Lissabon [online] | 21/07/2021
Towards fugitive subjectivities. Trans as a non-linear and deterritorialising movement
Conference „Creative Bodies – Creative Minds“, University of Graz [online] | 21/05/2021TALKS BY INVITATION | Guest Lectures
(Trans)Geschlechtlichkeit als Empfindung – eine neomaterialistische Perspektive auf Geschlechtsidentität
EN: Trans as a feeling – a new materialist perspective on gender identity, Workshop “Kritische Sexualforschung” at the Institute for Social Research Frankfurt/Main | 16/02/2024Researching the Role of Emotions in Gender Transitions
Higher Seminar, Centre for Gender Studie, Karlstad University, Sweden | 02/11/2022Researching Gender and Gender Transitions with a New Materialist Perspective
Research Seminar,
Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender, University of Brighton, UK | 22/09/2022
Gendertransitionen: Geschlechtliche Transformationsprozesse als materiell-diskursive Assemblage
EN: Gender transitions: Gender/sex transformation processes as a material-discursive assemblage, 7. Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (KWG), University of Graz | 26/05/2022Gender Transitions in Transformation: How do gender transitions emerge? A situated study with trans(itioning) subjects in Germany
Symposium "Gender in Transformation Processes: Central and Southeast European Perspectives", University of Graz, Austria, University of Zadar and the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Split, Croatia | online | 01/10/2021Ein Recht auf mein Geschlecht: Über und gegen die Pathologisierung von Trans*-Personen
EN: A right to my gender: Challenging the pathologisation of trans* people, University of Freiburg | 07/2017
ORGANISED PANELS
Zum Status von Materialität und materiellen Kulturen. Posthumane und neomaterialistische Perspektiven
EN: On the status of materiality and material cultures. Posthuman and neomaterialist perspectives, 7. Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (KWG), University of Graz | 26-28/05/2022Doing Transitions: Herstellung und Verhandlun von Grenzen und Zugehörigkeiten an Übergängen
EN: Doing Transitions: Producing and Negotiating Boundaries and Belongings in Transitions, 28. DGfE Kongress ENT | GRENZ | UNGEN, 13-16 März 2022, University of Bremen | 15/03/2022POSTER & VIDEO PRESENTATIONS
How Do Gender Transitions Unfold?
(Digital Poster ︎ Video Recording)Moving Trans History Forward Conference, University of Victoria, Canada | 04/2023
Doing Gender Transitions in neomaterialistischer Perspektivierung
Staying with the trouble. 25 Jahre Forschungsschwerpunkt Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in Hessen | 12/2021Doing Gender Transitions
International conference „Doing Transitions in the Life Course”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen | 02/2020Queere Identitätskritik und positive Differenz
International conference “Categories in Flux”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen | 10/2019other talks | media engagement
04/2024 | Lecture
Love & Politics
tt30 spring conference think tank 30: the young think tank of the Club of Rome, Brussels (online)29/04/23 | Interview
Unisex-Toiletten: Klos für alle - eigentlich ist es ganz einfach
Deuts chlandfunk Nova12/2023 | Podcast Guest
Academic research as and on trans
Podcast trans sein by Gen Eickers and Sophie Rauscher
Wer darf überhaupt zu "trans sein" forschen? Wer wird dabei wie ernst genommen? Und, Achtung: Es geht auch darum, ob es überhaupt cis Personen gibt.
04/2022 | Podcast Guest
Temporalities of Transition Desires
Queer Lit Podcast by Lena Mattheis 12/2020 | Podcast Guest
Neoliberal Promises, Individualism, Normalcy and Transformation
Podcast Rote Brause, Neues Deutschland10/2020 | Panel Discussion
LGBT+ in Organizations | Innoversity Festival
05/2019 | Lecture
Self-Organization in Journalism
Magenta School of Heroes Deutsche Telekom04/2016 | Lecture
Rethinking Print and Online Journalism: Posters in Public Spaces
Unit Festival Berlin
02/2016 | Panel Discussion
The Future of Journalism: Zukunftsstimmen – Welche Geschichten schreibt Journalismus 2030?
Konferenzwoche Leuphana University Lüneburg
09/2014 | Panel Discussion
Panel guest with Hans Werner Kilz
Bildung und Medien – talent! Junge Medienmacher06/2013 | Interview