Beyond self-evidence and exclusion

Why, where and for whom is particular knowledge important? These are the questions that are key to every post-colonial and feminist research project that the Gender Studies research group carries out. Based on a feminist and post-colonial perspective, our researchers seek to identify, understand, and rectify socio-cultural processes of inclusion and exclusion.

By breaking open the relationship between self-evidence, truth, and power, the Gender Studies researchers create new perspectives on art, culture, knowledge, and society. They study issues relating to social justice, equality, and difference at a number of levels, from the empirical social to the symbolic, cultural and science-critical. By problematising universalistic claims, they produce new knowledge about these issues.

Areas of expertise: diversity | ethnicity | emancipation | integration | masculinity | queer | trans | postsecular | posthuman | cultural critique | literature | film | new media | photography | performance arts

By displacing the perspective from the centre to the margins, research in this field has uncovered largely ignored patterns and themes that play a role in the lives and work of women and/or people with non-Western backgrounds, artists, and practitioners of cultural studies. Gender research also contributes to the exact sciences, and some insights in the medical sciences have even proved to have life-saving consequences.