Research Training Group: "Gender as a Category of Knowledge"
Our research training group for doctoral students, called the Graduiertenkolleg in German, has been generously supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since January 2005. The DFG recommended the research group, under the guidance of Christina von Braun, as a "high development priority" in light of the group's success in its first funding period. For the second period, funding was further increased. Through the end of 2013, we are pleased to be able to offer grants for fifteen PhD students and two post-doctoral fellows who will have the opportunity to continue their research at HU. Moreover, the research group has the option to include 15 additional doctoral students as associates and to integrate them into the research program.
The research group understands gender as a category of central importance in the formation of the disciplines of the arts and sciences, as well in the knowledge those disciplines can offer. The research group is concerned with the relevance of gender for the production of knowledge, its role in the formation of concepts in the arts and sciences, as well as its cross-disciplinary influence. The inclusion of disciplinary gender categories makes it necessary to exercise caution in relying on the heuristic separation of "sex" and “gender.” The central endeavor is rather to examine the approach that distinguishes a cultural system of gender relations from the binary understanding of sex, typically found in biological and other scientific discourses. This is intended to examine the parallel growth and change of cultural, political, and social understandings of gender in comparison to biological understandings.
The research training group is concerned with identifying common features of the history of science (especially the history of medicine) and the history of gender research. In the process, the historical dimension of gender in the history of knowledge can be brought into focus. Neither a history of the sciences, nor a history of gender can be told without mentioning the images of gender and gender codes embedded in the history of knowledge.
For further information about the research training group and individual research projects please consult the group's website: www.geschlecht-als-wissenskategorie.de
