Recap on the Distinguished Lecture: NeuroGenderings: Approaches for gender-equitable brain research on 13 February 2025

Another event in the Distinguished Lecture Series took place in the week before the major CRC 1665 meeting, the scientific retreat, with Professor Sigrid Schmitz from Humboldt University Berlin as guest speaker.

The public lecture NeuroGenderings: Approaches for gender-equitable brain research took place on Thursday, 13 February 2025 in the Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies (IMGWF) in Lübeck and simultaneously via Webex. Sigrid Schmitz’s lecture focused on the transdisciplinary NeuroGenderings network, which facilitates collaboration between experts from the neurosciences, gender, queer and feminist studies, as well as science and technology studies. The aim of this collaboration is to decipher the complicated interplay between biological, social and cultural variables in the context of brain research.

The following day, the seminar for the doctoral students took place as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series. After the welcome, the seminar began directly with a short Q & A. During this interview with PhD students, Sigrid Schmitz was asked a variety of questions about academic career advice and research experiences with focus on interdisciplinarity in science, as this is a particular focus of our CRC.

This was followed by a discussion on the issue of disentangling sex and gender in (neuro)science. In preparation for the seminar, the doctoral students read two papers on sex/gender differences in neuroscience: the first article was about how sex/gender differences in neuroscience are often interpreted as innate and biologically determined, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. In the second paper, the authors attempted to develop new approaches to unravel sex and gender in neuroscientific research. During the seminar, the doctoral students discussed in small groups whether there are similar assumptions about sex/gender in their respective fields of research and how they could be separated. Finally, the results of the small group discussion were to be presented to the entire plenum. Two things became clear in the discussion: firstly, the assumptions about sex/gender vary greatly between the different disciplines. Secondly, dealing with these assumptions requires different approaches depending on the discipline.

To summarise, the seminar was a success. By using an anonymous questionnaire, the participating doctoral students were able to give feedback on the seminar, which was consistently positive. The participants expressed their satisfaction with the programme and its implementation. The discussions in small groups, which focussed not only on the presentations themselves but also on the participants‘ own research, were particularly praised. Given the diversity of research areas represented by the participants, this goal represents a major challenge for the CRC 1665.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Sigrid Schmitz for the invaluable insights she provided.

Lisa Marie-Nuxoll & Konstantin Döhr