Gender and Culture studies unit

In the Gender Studies Unit, junior and senior researchers work independently as well as collaboratively around a set of questions at the forefront of gender studies and feminist research within and across the following three thematic areas:

• Digital technologies, emergent communities, transnational activism and social change;
• Discourses and practices of gender and sexuality at the intersection of critical race and feminist queer studies and post/decolonial methodologies;
• New approaches to bodies and embodiment: subjectivity/agency, vulnerability and precarity.

United by our critical approach to gender studies as a field of teaching and research, the Unit offers inspiring and challenging research exchanges in our Gender Studies Seminar Series, and each year, an annual Summer Symposia takes place. Researchers in the Unit are keen to think and work together, and delighted to welcome guest researchers for shorter or longer periods of stay. If you are interested in visiting our environment, please send an application with a personal letter and a 2-page CV to Lena Martinsson.

How can we approach gender from an inclusive perspective? In the context of controversies around gender studies and anti-gender mobilizations in Sweden and beyond, how can we address issues around normativity, binarity, feminist and LGBTQI+ movements, visual cultures and digital technologies? Featuring researchers from the Gender Studies Unit at the University of Gothenburg, this clip series looks at different aspects of gender studies, research, and education. Production of the clip series was funded by Stiftelsen Gustaf Adolf Bratts föreläsningsfond and coordinated by Selin Çağatay, Ph.D.

Link to video clips (external link)

Within the subject of gender studies , we train students to improve their ability to examine and investigate norms and societal structures. We focus on questions like: What is considered as knowledge? How is knowledge formed by social norms and the position/ality of the knower, and what are the conflicts around knowledge claims?

Our pedagogical approach departs from the notion of participatory teaching and learning. In this ambition, diversity, everyone’s right to speak and collective knowledge production are important. Base groups/project groups is one method developed to realize and further develop these aspirations. 

Gender studies at the University of Gothenburg is an expansive, international and interdisciplinary research and education environment. Postgraduate students attend the Gender Unit and contribute to the continuous development of the department and the subject. A common starting point for the Unit is that we approach the research field with a critical approach, whether the research questions are about feminist theory, political subjectivity, organization and resistance in a neoliberal, postcolonial and global era, about norms about age, gender, functionality and sexuality or on feminist knowledge production. The department's researchers investigate issues that are at the absolute center of the social debate and develop knowledge that provides new insights on complex phenomena. We continuously participate in debates and knowledge development about, for example, trans issues, gender equality policy, care, reproduction and care, decolonial or critical animal studies or about the importance of digital technologies for transnational social movements.  
 
PhD students in the Unit have the opportunity to develop as independent, critical and reflective gender researchers with the ability to contribute to developing theoretical perspectives, methodologies and ethical approaches. The department is part of the international research school Intergender and doctoral students have access to international as well as national networks. All PhD students are eligible to teach or carry out administrative duties during postgraduate education.

The Gender Hub and the Ph.D. /Post-Doc hub are spaces that connect gender studies scholars and other researchers with a strong interest in questions of social justice, gender and sexualities, and serves as a collaborative, semi-formal space of exchange and support in research, education and collaboration. They emerged as a response to anti-gender campaigns and increased rhetoric and practices limiting academic freedom and freedom of conducting research and education in an independent environment that our institution provided for decades.

The Gender Ph.D. and Post-Doc hub has been developed with the aspiration to create a network and supporting environment in research and writing processes based on students' and researchers' solidarity. The hub is a space of exchange of ideas and thoughts but also social action, network building and collaboration across the university, but also between universities in Sweden and abroad.

Both networks are open spaces for participation in various forms such as reading groups, get-together, sharing networks, and co-organizing events.