Gender and Knowledge Production in the
Medical, Technical and Natural Sciences

The sub-program Gender and Knowledge Production within the Medical, Technical and Natural Sciences focuses on the irreducible intertwinement of the embodiment of sexual difference with gender constructions, sociotechnical relationships, technoscience and knowledge production. It analyses how gender relations and cultural beliefs about sexual difference are incorporated into the bioscientific imaginary and, in turn, into knowledge production. In short, the program explores how technoscience produces gendered bodies and other objects of knowledge. As such, epistemological concerns are always treated as inseparable from questions of ontology and ethics. Critical attention is focused both on the biosciences and biotechnologies and on the circulation of information technologies, new media and popular science which infuse contemporary social life. An important element of the sub-program is the international field of Feminist Science Studies in which the issue of materiality is brought together with broadly postmodernist theory.

The program is lead by Professor Margrit Shildrick  who is an internationally recognised body theorist with expertise in poststructuralist theory, critical cultural studies and feminist postmodernist bioethics. She is also well-known for her extensive work in critical disability studies in which she holds the post of Adjunct Professor at York University, Toronto. She is a member of many international research networks that address differential embodiment including Center for Somatechnics; Feminist Approaches to Bioethics; International Consortium of Bioethics, Sexuality and Gender Identity; Nordic Network for Gender and Medicine; Network on Environments and Women’s Health; and the international Retheorising Women’s Health Group.