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Kathrin Thiele is Assistant Professor for Gender Studies in the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, where she teaches courses in feminist philosophies, technoscience studies, and literary and visual representations of femininity.

Her research interests include continental philosophy (esp. French philosophy), feminist theories of difference, and posthuman(ist) studies. Her published work explores a Deleuzian feminist legacy with focus on questions of ethics and politics. Her academic background lies in sociology, literature, and philosophy, and this transdisciplinary perspective translates both into her teaching of undergraduate and graduate courses at Utrecht University, and her current research on the future of sexual difference and a feminist cosmo-politics.

She is also MA-coordinator of 'Comparative Women's Studies in Culture and Politics' in the Graduate Gender Programme.

2010-present Assistant Professorfor Gender Studies in the Graduate Gender Program at the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, NL

2009-2010 Assistant Professorat the Department of Philosophy, Potsdam University, and academic coordinator of the DFG-Graduierten-kolleg Lebensformen und Lebenswissen, Europe University Viadrina/Potsdam University, Germany

2007-2009 Postdoctoral Fellow in the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Lebensformen und Lebenswissen, Europe University Viadrina/Potsdam University, Germany

2007 PhD (Department of Comparative Literature, University of Buffalo (SUNY), USA)

2003-2006 Doctoral Fellow in the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Repräsentation – Rhetorik – Wissen, Europe University Viadrina, Germany

2002 MA (Department of Comparative Literature, University of Buffalo (SUNY), USA)

1992-1999 BA/MA Department of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany, and London School of Economics, UK

2003-2008: An Ethics of Becoming: Gilles Deleuze’s Poet(h)ics of Life

In this project I have examined the potentials and challenges of an ethics embedded in 'life' and came to contest two common misperceptions: Rather than understanding philosophy and ethics as abstractions from the world, I investigated in what sense both are constructive of it; and secondly, by focusing my discussion of ethics on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and his affirmative reception in recent critical theory and feminist thought, I argued against the common misunderstanding that poststructuralism cannot contribute significantly to ethico-political debates of today’s globalized and differentiated societies. In my project I elaborated a Deleuzian thought of becoming that rewrites ontology and leads to the Spinozian formula: ontology = ethics. Such activation of thought as creative practice of life also follows the critical legacy in feminist research, an engagement oriented always towards change and the potential for a different future.

Most relevant publications:
K.Thiele (2008) The Thought of Becoming. Gilles Deleuze’s Poetics of Life, Berlin/Zürich: diaphanes.
K. Thiele/K. Trüstedt (2010) HAPPY DAYS: Lebenswissen nach Cavell, München/Paderborn: Fink.

2009-present: Towards a Feminist Cosmopolitics: Immanence and Worlding-With-Others

In this ongoing research project, I pursue the question of a political vision for a world characterized fundamentally by irreducible differences, traversing all national and inter-national boundaries. Starting from radical affirmation of the differential character of this world, in interrelated subprojects I inquire into different conceptual tools such as immanence, transversality, and worlding-with-others in order to sketch the elements that any political vision for our differential world needs to respond to. I take recourse to philosophies of immanence, from the radical minds of the 17th century (e.g. Spinoza) to the most thought-provoking feminists of the 21st century (e.g. Haraway, Stengers), in order to imagine a cosmo-politics that is capable of keeping itself open to the other and a living in/with differences.

Most relevant publications and events:
- M.Muhle/K.Thiele (2010) Biopolitische Konstellationen, Berlin: August.
- K. Thiele (2010) ‘To Believe In This World As It Is’- Immanence and the Quest for Political Activism’, in: Deleuze Studies 4/4, pp. 29-45.
-Keynote (March 2011) ‘Rethinking System and Belief. Worlds and Worldings with Nancy, Guattari, and Haraway’, at the Philosophers’ Rally, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL

2010-present: The Posthumanist Future of Sexual Difference: Revisiting ‘The Feminine’

In my most recent project I return to feminisms of sexual difference with the aim of working towards an understanding and conceptualization of both ‘sexual difference’ and ‘the feminine’ that is adequate to the demands of our 21st century. My double focus in this project is to think sexual difference beyond all origins – essentialization or biological determinisms – while simultaneously attending to a disavowed anthropocentrism that still structures most theorizations of sexual difference. By working through this latter, I embark on a use of the feminine that proliferates another ‘different difference’, one in which sharing instead of separating still plays the key role (Irigaray/Ettinger), but one that also inquires critically into the assumed exclusivity of the human.

Current projects and events:
- “Diffracted Worlds – Diffractive Readings: Onto-Epistemologies and the Humanities” (special issue under review for parallax, co-edited with B. M. Kaiser)
- Bracha L. Ettinger: Visit to the Graduate Gender Studies Program in Utrecht, April 10-18, 2012

2011-present MA-coordinator 'Comparative Women's Studies in Culture and Politics', Graduate Gender Program, Utrecht University, NL

2010-present Member of the Educational Advisory Board of the nationwide Research School Gender Studies (NOG)

Supervisor in the InterGender Consortium (Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies: http://intergender.net)


Academic Networks

Member of the National Research School for Gender Studies (NOG)

Member of ATGENDER (The European Association for Gender Research, Documentation and Education)

Member of the ATGENDER thematic focus group '(European) Material Feminisms'

Member of the American Comparative Literature Association ACLA

Founding member of the International Research Group TheoriePraxis