Contents & Possible Specializations
Academic research orienting itself around “gender” as a guiding category has united many different disciplines since the beginnings of feminist scholarship. Gender studies is a classic example of interdisciplinary academic engagement. Theoretically and empirically, gender studies has always developed further through scholarly exchange and mutual criticism between various academic disciplines.
Gender studies includes all research that engages with gender roles and -concepts, the practice and meaning of gender and all the accompanying inconsistencies with a critical and reflective standard. Central topics of such research could be e.g., (inter)action, space, the body, imagery, heteronormativity, knowledge, desire, identities, violence etc.
Aims
The most important aim of the doctoral program “Interdisciplinary Gender Studies” is to provide doctoral candidates an opportunity for multidisciplinary discussion, to enable exchanges with researchers and instructors in the field of gender studies and to facilitate the acquisition of experience in academic praxis. The student members of the program have access to a wide array of specialized approaches, theories and methods and through engaging with these can refine their own approaches. The diverse competencies that are spread throughout the various faculties of the university are concentrated in the program and made accessible to its students for this purpose.
Additionally, the doctoral program facilitates networking with other doctoral candidates in the field of gender studies through regular doctoral workshops and through cooperations in conceptualizing an academic event or publications.
Furthermore, there are possibilities for self-organized exchange between doctoral candidates, specifically in the context of a “reading group for the student/research members of the doctoral program.”
Over the course of three to four semesters, the doctoral colloquium provides students with a continuous and constructive space for discussion for the development of a precise academic research question in the framework of a doctoral dissertation, for the furthering of expertise in theoretical-methodological approaches and for the treatment of specific issues arising in the context of respective dissertation projects.
Individual Procedure
The procedure can be adapted to individual needs. The doctoral colloquium offers a supportive environment in which research questions, theses, approaches, methods, theories and the prospective orientation and structure of dissertation projects can be intensively discussed. Doctoral candidates present initial detailed results of their dissertation projects in the context of relevant academic events. Presentations, commentaries and discussions occur every semester in a public block workshop (in the context of the doctoral colloquium for doctoral program members).
Doctoral candidates in the program receive regular structured feedback to their planned qualification projects from the instructors of the doctoral program as well as from external experts.
Additionally, there are optional events (events and courses from instructors and research members of the doctoral program).
ECTS-Credits can be acquired through participation in the doctoral colloquium as well as through active contribution to academic events or through publications.