research 
 writing 

 talking 
 teaching 

 projects 


 








Research Associate
Institute for Sociology
Goethe University Frankfurt
Germany

        

︎  ︎ ︎  Vita

 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“ | 2024-2026 


The 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 | 2020-2024 

The 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 2024


Interaktiv 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 research
Zeitschrift 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 | 2020
Open Access Download


Familismus in der Coronakrise 

Soziologiemagazin, Blogreihe 8: Soziologische Impulse während Corona. Together with Magdalena Müssig | 2020
online


Copy Editor for 

Trans & Care: Trans Personen zwischen Selbstsorge, Fürsorge und Versorgung

edited by Appenroth, Max,  Castro Varela, María | 2019
transcript 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.








 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 | 27/10/2022


Doing 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 | 19/09/2022


Doing Gender Transitions from a new materialist perspective

European Feminist Research Conference, University Milano-Bicocca | 16/06/2022


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 | 13/06/2022


Übergangsforschung als Grenzziehungspraktiken anhand einer Studie zu Gendertransitionen

EN: Transition research as boundary-drawing practices based on a study on gender transitions
28. 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] | 20/09/2021


Gender Transitions as a Sociotechnical Issue

Conference Track Science and Technology. 15th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Barcelona [online] | 01/09/2021


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 [online] | 21/07/2021


Towards fugitive subjectivities. Trans as a non-linear and deterritorialising movement

Conference „Creative Bodies – Creative Minds“, University of Graz [online] | 21/05/2021




TALKS 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 | 16/02/2024


Researching the Role of Emotions in Gender Transitions

Higher Seminar, Centre for Gender Studie, Karlstad University, Sweden | 02/11/2022


Researching 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 | 26/05/2022


Gender 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 | 01/10/2021


Ein 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 | 26-28/05/2022


Doing 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 | 15/03/2022




POSTER & 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 | 12/2021


Doing Gender Transitions

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


Queere Identitätskritik und positive Differenz

International conference “Categories in Flux”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen10/2019





 other 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 Nova 


12/2023 | 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 Deutschland


10/2020 | Panel Discussion

LGBT+ in Organizations Innoversity Festival



05/2019 | Lecture

Self-Organization in Journalism

Magenta School of Heroes Deutsche Telekom


04/2016 | 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 Medienmacher


06/2013 | Interview

Unkonventionell und frisch – Innovative Ideen junger Medienmacher

Deutschlandfunk