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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

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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

Summer semester 2026:
Trans Moral Panic and the Construction of Risk in Prisons (BA)

Winter semester 2025/26:
Critical Prison Studies (MA)

Summer semester 2025:
Discipline and Punish (MA)

Winter semester 2024/25:
Queer Subjectivities and Identity Formation (BA)
Trans People in Prison Systems (MA)

Summer semester 2024:
Introduction to Queer Theory (BA)

Winter semester 2023/24:
Academic Knowledge Production and Practising Activism (MA)

Summer semester 2023:
Doing Gender (BA)

Winter Semester 2022/23:
Introduction to Trans Studies (MA)

Summer semester 2022:
Trans Studies and Social Work (BA)

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

Working title of PhD project: "Epistemologies of Trans Confinement: Lived Experiences, Risk, and Vulnerability in German Prisons"

This dissertation investigates the lived realities of trans, inter, and nonbinary (TIN) people in the context of imprisonment in Germany. Drawing on feminist epistemology, poststructuralism, and critical phenomenology, the project examines how gender and incarceration intersect in embodied ways to shape experiences of exclusion, vulnerability, and resistance within carceral institutions. The study aims to explore how TIN people in German prisons experience and make sense of incarceration, and how these experiences both reproduce and contest socio-legal constructions of gender, risk, and danger. The empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with eight incarcerated TIN participants conducted in cooperation with the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN), complemented by experiential interviews and by autoethnographic data generated through the method of Focusing during the research process.
The analysis, currently in progress, is grounded in (auto)ethnographic observations that trace the researcher’s entanglement in the field and make transparent how the researching body, including its affects and vulnerabilities, participates in knowledge production. Informed by trans and Black feminist scholarship on the subjugation of marginalised knowledges, the project seeks to actively desubjugate trans knowledges of imprisoned people and to foreground the inseparability of gender, embodiment, and confinement at the level of lived experience. The material indicates that TIN people in prison are subject to intersecting forms of marginalisation that manifest through specific pains of imprisonment such as social isolation, feeling unheard, and lacking access to knowledge on navigating life as a TIN person. These experiences are strongly tied to constructions of risk and danger associated with transness – particularly transfemininity – in carceral contexts and demonstrate that gender and imprisonment are experientially co-constitutive.
Anticipated contributions include a novel methodological model for embodied carceral research that centres marginalised knowledges; theoretical advancements in understanding the co-constitution of gender, risk, and confinement; and an epistemic challenge to dominant narratives of transfemininity in criminology and beyond.

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

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