LOUKA MAJU GOETZKE 

 Research   Writing   Talking    Teaching   Projects 

 
  







Ph.D Candidate 
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

 



upcoming 

13.04.2024 | Talk 
︎Politik & Liebe | Frühjahrstagung des Think Tank 30 der Deutschen Gesellschaft Club of Rome, Brussels, Belgium︎

27.-30.08.2024 | Conference Paper 
︎How New Materialist Trans Theorising helps to understand current Tensions around Trans/Gender,  European Sociological Association Conference on Tension, Trust and Transformation, Porto, Portugal ︎




research

I am a doctoral candidate in Sociology in the cooperative Research Training Group “Doing Transitions” of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, holding a fellowship by the German Research Foundation.  

My Ph.D. project looks at gender transitions through the lens of  new materialism. I am interested in how contemporary sex/gender transitions are made, how they become evident as transitions and their differentiation from non-transitioning gender. Following Susan Stryker, I understand sex/gender transitions as non-linear movements across socially imposed boundaries, away from an unchosen starting place, the gender assigned at birth and in everyday life. Based on a new materialist ethnography I conducted, including interviews with people who transition in Germany, I develop a situated description of the different material-discursive boundary drawing processes that shape sex/gender transitions. For this, I make use of a new materialist methodology based on Karen Barad’s Agential Realism and Gilles Deleuze’s Difference-in-itself. 
“The only way
to get outside the dualisms
is to be-between,
to pass between”


Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus


 RESEARCH  INTERESTS

  • Feminist Theory and criticism of science
  • Trans Studies
  • Socio-material approaches, new materialisms
  • Temporality, processes of differentiation,  transformation
  • Subjectivity, embodiment,
    modern self formation






writing


 ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS 

Articles 
Interaktiv und intersektional: Sexualbildung für Jugendliche mit dem Digitalspiel „Sibel’s Journey“ [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. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik Beiheft 68/2022, 82 - 97. 2022.

Die Covid-19-Pandemie bedroht alle. Geschützt werden nur einige. Femina Politica, Heft 2/2020: Politiken der Generativität und Reproduktive Rechte, Seite 121 - 122. Together with Magdalena Müssig. 2020. [PDF]

Neuer Materialismus. socialnet Lexikon. Bonn: socialnet. Together with Tamara Schwertel. 2021. [online]

Familismus in der Coronakrise. Soziologiemagazin, Blogreihe 8: Soziologische Impulse während Corona. Together with Magdalena Müssig. 2020. [online]

Copy Editing 
transcript Verlag
Appenroth, Max,  Castro Varela, María (2019) Trans & Care: Trans Personen zwischen Selbstsorge, Fürsorge und Versorgung. 



 NON-ACADEMIC 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.






talking


 CONFERENCE PAPERS  

11/05/2023: 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, Germany

24/02/2023: “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

27/10/2022: “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

19/09/2022: Doing Gender Transitions: Eine neomaterialistische Perspektive auf Geschlechter in Bewegung. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS), Bielefeld University 

16/06/2022: Doing Gender Transitions from a new materialist perspective. European Feminist Research Conference, University Milano-Bicocca

13/06/2022: Becoming 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

15/03/2022: Übergangsforschung als Grenzziehungspraktiken anhand einer Studie zu Gender Transitionen. Paper at 28. DGfE Kongress ENT | GRENZ | UNGEN, 13-16 März 2022, University Bremen

20/09/2021: „Und dann konnte ich mich zum ersten Mal selbst so sehen.“ – Zur Rolle von Un_sichtbarkeiten in Gender Transitionen. Paper at 8. Jahrestagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Geschlechterforschung „Ambivalente Un_Sichtbarkeiten“

01/09/2021: Gender Transitions as a Sociotechnical Issue: A New Materialist Approach. Conference Track Science and Technology. 15th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Barcelona

21/07/2021: Crossing 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

21/05/2021: Towards fugitive subjectivities. Trans as a non-linear and deterritorialising movement. Conference „Creative Bodies – Creative Minds“, University of Graz


 LECTURES & PAPERS  non-peer-reviewed/by Invitation 

26/05/2022: Gendertransitionen: Geschlechtliche Transformationsprozesse als materiell-diskursive Assemblage. 7. Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (KWG), University of Graz

01/10/2021: Gender Transitions in Transformation: How do gender transitions emerge? A situated study with trans(itioning) subjects in Germany. Talk at the  Interdisciplinary Online-Symposiums "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
 
07/2017: Ein Recht auf mein Geschlecht: Über und gegen die Pathologisierung von Trans*-Personen – University of Freiburg


 ORGANISED PANELS 

26-28/05/2022: 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

15/03/2022: Doing Transitions: Herstellung und Verhandlung
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


 POSTER PRESENTATIONS 

12/2021: Doing Gender Transitions in neomaterialistischer Perspektivierung. Staying with the trouble. 25 Jahre Forschungsschwerpunkt Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in Hessen 

02/2020: Doing Gender Transitions, International conference „Doing Transitions in the Life Course”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

10/2019: Queere Identitätskritik und positive DifferenzInternational conference “Categories in Flux”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen


 OTHER TALKS ︎ MEDIA ENGAGEMENT 

12/2023
Talking about research as and on trans as a guest on the 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
Talking about the Temporality of Forming a Desire to Transition –  for an mini episode of the Queer Lit Podcast by Lena Mattheis 

12/2020
Interview on Neoliberal Promises, Individualism, Normalcy and Transformation – by Podcast Rote Brause, Neues Deutschland

10/2020
 


09/2014
Panel guest with Hans Werner Kilz, Bildung und Medien – talent! Junge Medienmacher





teaching & trainings   


 ACADEMIC TEACHING & WORKSHOPS 


Materielle Gerontologie – Theoretische und Methodologische Fragen
Leitung des Nachwuchsworkshops und Besprechung von Promotionsprojekten im Rahmen der Tagung „Körper, Dinge und Räume des Alter(n)s: Perspektiven und Befunde einer Materiellen Gerontologie“ der Sektion Alter(n) und Gesellschaft der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Kooperation mit dem DFG-Nachwuchsnetzwerk Materielle Gerontologie, Münster, 07.-08.09.2023 

Wie kommen Gendertransitionen zustande?
One-time seminar as part of the B.A. course “Trans*: Theorie/Kunst/Aktivismus”, Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, Austria, 17.12.2022 

How Do Gender Transitions Unfold? – A New Materialist Approach
One-time Research Seminar, Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender, University of Brighton, UK, 22.09.2022

Becoming different (from each other)
Undergrad course, M.A. & B.A. Gender Studies, B.A. Sociology & Educational Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Summer Term 2022
Keywords: Theories of difference and differenciation, Doing Difference, Intersectionality, New Materialism, Relational Ontology, Difference-in-itself, Agential Realism, Relational Becoming

Doing Gender Transitions – Geschlecht in Bewegung 
Guest lecture in a course “Introduction to the Sociology of Gender”, B.A. Sociology, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Summer Term 2022

New materialist approaches to transitions
Guest lecture in a team-taught seminar “Zu Übergängen forschen” together with Tamara Schwertel, M.A. Educational Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Summer Term 2021

Gender Transition: Eine Reise von einem Geschlecht ins andere?
Public evening lecture „Studium Generale: Doing Transitions – wie sich Übergänge im Lebenslauf herstellen“, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Summer Term 2021

Umgang mit Geschlechtervielfalt: Einführung in die Trans Studies
Undergrad course, B.A. Gender Studies, Sociology & Educational Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Winter Term 2020/21
Topics: Central notions in Trans Studies, (Historical) becoming of Trans Studies, Decolonial perspectives on gender and trans, Methodologies in Trans Studies

A New Materialist Methodology to Researching Gender Transitions
Guest lecture in a  a team-taught seminar “Zu Übergängen forschen – Perspektiven und Methoden zur Erforschung von Übergängen im Lebenslauf”, M.A. Educational Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Summer Term 2020 



 TRAININGS  & WORKSHOPS  
 
I regularely give workshops and trainings outside academia on
  • Gender and sexual diversity
  • Sexism: How it works and how we unlearn it
  • Gender bias in journalism and inclusive (visual) language

As I’m entering the last year of my Ph.D., I’m not available for trainings at the moment. If you are interested in a training taking place in 2024, don’t hesitate to contact me. I facilitate in English, German and French, online and offline, and happily develop a training adjusted to your needs. 

I’ve mostly facilitated workshops and trainings for journalists, NGOs and youth work projects such as: 
Ringier AG, BLICK, Switzerland    |     Heinrich Böll Foundation, Germany   |    re:publica Conference, Germany   |   Deutsch-türkische Jugendbrücke, Turkey & Germany    |   Zinefest Berlin, Germany   |  Global Education Digital Youth Work Project, Turkey & Germany    |   Z2X – Das Festival der Neuen Visionäre – Die ZEIT, Germany   |   Gendered Intelligence, UK    |   Solijugend, Germany    |   Grüne Jugend, Germany    |  
Ringier AG, BLICK, Switzerland    |     Heinrich Böll Foundation, Germany   |    re:publica Conference, Germany   |   Deutsch-türkische Jugendbrücke, Turkey & Germany    |   Zinefest Berlin, Germany   |  Global Education Digital Youth Work Project, Turkey & Germany    |   Z2X – Das Festival der Neuen Visionäre – Die ZEIT, Germany   |   Gendered Intelligence, UK    |   Solijugend, Germany    |   Grüne Jugend, Germany    |