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  • Medizinische Fakul­tät OWL

    Wortwolke zur Gender-Gastprofessur
    © Universität Bielefeld

Gender Guest Professorship 2023/2024 at the Medical School OWL

In the winter semester 2023/2024, the Gender Guest Professorship of Bielefeld University will be a guest at the Medical School OWL on the initiative of the Equal Opportunities Department of the Medical School OWL and the working group AG 10 Gender-Sensitive Medicine.

By inviting the renowned researcher Prof. Londa Schiebinger as a Gender Guest Professor, the aim is to focus on innovative research into gender-sensitive medicine and gender (in)justice in medicine and to provide further impetus for the integration of gender aspects into research and teaching at the Faculty and the University as a whole.

Photograph of Londa Schiebinger wearing a white blouse with a high collar, a pearl necklace and a black jacket. Her arms are crossed below her chest and she is smiling.
© L.A. Cicero

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University, and Founding Director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. She is a leading international expert on gender in science and technology and has addressed the United Nations, the European Parliament, and numerous funding agencies on the topic. Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Universitat de València, Spain, 2018; Lunds Universitet, Sweden, 2017; Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, 2013. Her prize-winning books include: The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Harvard University Press, 1989); Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Beacon Press, 1993; Rutgers University Press, 2004); Has Feminism Changed Science? (Harvard University Press, 1999); Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2004); Gendered Innovations: How Gender Analysis Contributes to Research (European Commission, 2013); Secret Cures of Slaves People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford University Press, 2017); and with Robert N. Proctor, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (Stanford University Press, 2008). Her books have been translated into numerous languages.

Events in summer term 24

Two public events will take place from 17 to 20 June 2024. Students and members of the Medical School OWL as well as all interested parties are cordially invited. Registration is requested.

What role does gender play in (medical) research? How can (must?) sex and gender be increasingly addressed in research?

The Inspiring Science format explores these important questions in the Salon Talk and aims to open up new perspectives and points of view. It will also discuss the influence of the researchers' gender on the research results and how this can be dealt with in a reflective manner.

The Salon Talk will be held in English, but you can participate in the discussion in German and contribute your questions.

Registration is requested. Last-minute visitors are very welcome.

The event will take place in building R1, room Z2.

Directions to building R1 room Z2

Based on the intersectional design cards (https://intersectionaldesign.com/) developed by Professor Londa Schiebinger together with London-based designer Hannah Jones, we will create tools for train-the-trainer seminars and interactive teaching in a co-creative workshop. In addition to group work and dialogue, the international gamification and inclusivity expert Vivian Acquah and the board member of the International Gender and Design Network Claudia Herling will also give keynotes for the participants and act as mentors for the teams. Yuen Yen Tsai will guide us through the day as a moderator with gaming experience.

Further information for the workshop and registration can be found here.

Past events (winter semester 2023/24)

As part of Prof. Schiebinger's first visit from 16-19 October 2023, two (university) public presentations took place.

  • COLLOQUIUM: Tuesday, 17.10.2023, 17-19:00: From the Mind Has No Sex? to Gendered Innovations in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies (IZG) and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies of Science (I²SoS), room details will be provided upon registration
  • LECTURE: Wednesday, 18 October 2013, 17-18:30: Gendered Innovations: Enhancing Excellence in Science & Technology public lecture as part of the Medical Research Lecture Series, CITEC - Cognitive Interaction Technology Lecture Hall

 

This talk will follow the development of the field of gender in science from the 1980s to the present—through my academic work and career. The Mind Has No Sex? was written in the early 1980s when it was imperative to expose the privileged first-born twins of modern science: the myth of the natural body, and the myth of value-neutral knowledge. The claim of science to objectivity was the linchpin holding together a system that rendered women’s exclusion from science invisible, and made this exclusion appear just and natural. My work has been devoted to dismantling this self-reinforcing cultural system. Beginning with my doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, I identified three analytically distinct, but interlocking, pieces of the puzzle: the history of women’s participation in science; the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge. These are now known as “The Three Fixes”: Fix the Numbers, Fix the Institutions, Fix the Knowledge. I will discuss the development of gender—and now intersectionality—in the history of science from my earliest work to the global Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment project. 

How can we harness the creative power of sex, gender, and intersectional analysis for discovery and innovation? This talk will explore what gendered innovations is, how it works, its methods and case studies. As time allows, we will take case studies from health & biomedicine, ML/AI, robotics, climate change, and computer science curriculum. We will also discuss policy initiatives at funding agencies, peer-reviewed journals, such as Nature, and universities and research institutions. To match the global reach of science and technology, Gendered Innovations was developed through a collaboration of over 220 experts from across the United States, Europe, Canada, and Asia. Major funders include the European Commission, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and Stanford University. Participants may wish to read: Sex, Gender Analysis Improves Science and Engineering Nature (2019); Science (2022); Gendered Innovations 2: How Inclusive Analysis Contributes to Research and Innovation (Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2020), Ensuring that Biomedical AI Benefits Diverse Populations eBioMedicine (2021), and A Framework for Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research Science (2022). For late-breaking news on research in this area, join the Gendered Innovations listserv.

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