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Leonie Schulz

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1. Faculty of Sociology / Research and Teaching Units / Unit 8 - Sociology of Gender / Working Group König

Research assistant in the field of sociology of gender (Prof. König)

E-Mail
Leonie.schulz@uni-bielefeld.de  
Phone
+49 521 106-4619  
Phone No. of Secretary
+49 521 106-4612 − Secretary's Details
Office
Gebäude X C3-246 − Locations Map
Availability

By registration

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2. Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology / Doctoral researchers

Curriculum Vitae

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Since 11/2022: Research associate in the research and teaching unit 8 - Sociology of Gender in the working group Prof. Dr. Tomke König
Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University

10/2024 - 09/2025: Research associate at the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) in the project "Transgender People in Prison"

07/2023 - 12/2024: Professional training: Certificate "Professional Teaching Competencies for Universities"

03/2022 - 09/2022: Associate Lecturer in BA Social Work
Seminar title: "Trans Studies and Social Work"
Faculty of Applied Social Sciences, Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

03/2022 - 09/2022: Student research assistant in the working area 8 - Sociology of Gender
Working group Prof. Dr. Tomke König
Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University

05/2021 - 10/2021: Scientific research and writing activities in the project Recovery Acres: Development of a concept for the integration of recovering substance users into a community
Carried out for the non-profit organisation Lady Flower Gardens
Edmonton in Alberta, Canada

02/2020 - 05/2022: Program coordinator of the peer mentoring program Blickpunkte on behalf of the Equal Opportunities Commission at the Faculty of Sociology
Bielefeld University

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

- Trans Moral Panic and the Construction of Risk in Prisons (BA, Summer 2026)
- Critical Prison Studies (MA, Winter 2025/26)
- Discipline and Punish (MA, Summer 2025)
- Queer Subjectivities and Identity Formation (BA, Winter 2024/25)
- Trans People in Prison Systems (MA, Winter 2024/25)
- Introduction to Queer Theory (BA, Summer 2024)
- Academic Knowledge Production and Practising Activism (MA, Winter 2023/24)
- Doing Gender (BA, Summer 2023)
- Introduction to Trans Studies (MA, Winter 2022/23)
- Trans Studies and Social Work (BA, Summer 2022)

ACADEMIC DEGREES

09/2019 - 10/2022: MA Gender Studies - Interdisciplinary Research and Application
Bielefeld University
Master thesis title: 'It's not all sunshine and rainbows': An exploration of how trans people negotiate subjectification processes on r/NonBinaryTalk in the context of transnormative pressures
Grade of Master thesis: 1.3 (very good)
Overall grade: 1.1
Awarded with an honorary certificate for the best degree of the year in MA Gender Studies

09/2016 - 09/2019: BA Anthropology and Sociology (Double major degree)
Maynooth University, Ireland
Bachelor thesis title: "How Trans* Students in Ireland Experience their College Environments"
Grade of Bachelor thesis: 1.0
Overall grade: 1.3

PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS

01/2024: Trans and Social Work (Guest Lecture: University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Bielefeld)

11/2023: Introduction to Gender Studies (for the Droste-Haus Youth Exchange Programme in the Area of Gütersloh e.V.)

09/2023: (Intersectional) Gender Sensitivity in Teaching (LehrBar - Exchange of Teaching Staff, Uni Bielefeld)

2020-2022: Variety of workshops (e.g. gender workshops) in the context of a peermentoring programme for inter, nonbinary and female students of the faculty of sociology, University of Bielefeld

Current research topics

Ongoing PhD project:

While gender and sexuality have received growing attention in the largely US-based field of critical prison studies, the situation of trans, inter and non-binary (TIN) people in German prisons has so far been addressed by only a handful of studies. My dissertation starts from this gap, and from a discrepancy that runs through the existing literature: TIN people, and trans women in particular, are widely read as a risk to others, while being themselves disproportionately exposed to verbal, physical and sexualised violence.

I ask how gender is embodied under the conditions of a rigidly binary total institution, and how it is thereby brought forth, negotiated and lived. The question extends to how these experiences are entangled with other dimensions of domination, such as criminalisation, racialisation, language, disability or addiction. My theoretical framework brings together feminist and trans epistemology, for which knowledge is always situated and some knowledges are actively subjugated, critical phenomenology, which reads incarceration as a bodily condition that co-produces subjectivity, and poststructuralist accounts of power and subjectivation.

Empirically, the project draws on eight qualitative interviews with incarcerated TIN people, conducted in summer 2025 in cooperation with the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN). I work with experiential, focusing-centred interviewing, an approach that invites interviewees to articulate what is already bodily sensed but not yet put into words, and I frame my methodology as an affective and caring ethnography. Articulation, I would argue, presupposes someone who listens, which makes careful listening the condition under which such knowledge becomes sayable and audible at all.

The project aims to contribute a model for embodied and reflexive prison research, and an empirically grounded intervention into dominant narratives about transness, danger and vulnerability.

Memberships and Functions

- European Sociological Association
- Gender Studies Association
- German Society for Sociology (Section: Women's- and Gender Studies)
- Network Women's and Gender Studies North Rhine-Westphalia