THE CENTRE
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender Studies is an interfaculty research institution affiliated with School III - School of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Oldenburg. It sees itself as a forum for inter- and transdisciplinary gender research that productively utilises the networking of research perspectives and forms a central contact point for researchers, teachers and students on questions of gender research.

The work of the ZFG is characterised by important contributions to basic research and its pronounced international orientation, which is manifested in research projects from two long-standing research clusters: KNOWLEDGE - INSTITUTION - MEMORY and TRANSCULTURALITY - MIGRATIONS. The cultural studies focus is complemented by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects. The ZFG's tasks also include its commitment to research-based teaching and the profiling of the BA degree programme in Gender Studies.

HISTORY
The ZFG was founded in 2000 as an interfaculty research institution - the first of its kind in Lower Saxony and one of the first two in Germany. Supported by the Women's Equal Opportunities Office, the University Management and the University Senate as well as the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) with a ten-year funding period, twenty professors, research assistants and scholarship holders were involved in the founding process. On 17 May 2001, the directors and staff from the fields of educational, social and cultural sciences began work, together with the members of all status groups in the newly founded Centre Council.

The first major international conference was held in July, which laid the foundation for long-standing co-operation under the title "Societies in Transition - Challenges to Women's and Gender Studies" (Fleßner/Potts (ed.) 2002). Visiting professorships, which were acquired through the Maria Goeppert Meyer Programme of the MWK from 2001 until the programme was discontinued in 2010, also contributed to the international profile. Female academics from Eastern Europe, the USA and New Zealand, South Africa and Yemen enriched the work of the ZFG.

At regional level, a "Cooperation Network for Gender Research in the North-West Region" was established with the Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven University of Applied Sciences (FH OOW), which developed and implemented numerous projects between 2004 and 2009, including in the areas of gender in university teaching and male socialisation.

The social and educational science focus was expanded from 2003 to 2009 by a junior professorship, which established the area of "Gender, Bio-Technologies and Society: Body Discourses and Gender Constructions" for research and teaching. Regrettably, it was not possible to continue this research area with its combination of gender studies and natural sciences after it was discontinued. The international dimension was expanded during this time through DAAD-funded projects: Politics and Gender with South Africa, Uganda and Yemen as well as with Morocco, Lebanon and Yemen as part of the German-Arab University Dialogue.

From 2009/10, the profile of the ZFG changed towards a cultural studies orientation, which was accompanied by a change of director and the connection to School III - School of Linguistics and Cultural Studies. The 10th anniversary was duly celebrated under the motto: "ZEHNHOCHDREI - Ten years of ZFG and a new School". The keynote speech by Prof Dr Cornelia Klinger (Tübingen) "The category of gender between nature, culture and society" pointed to the overarching continuity of research interests.

The reorganisation of the ZFG was also associated with a change in the personnel situation. Overall, in its 2013 evaluation report on the situation of gender research at universities in Lower Saxony, the Scientific Commission of Lower Saxony certified the centre as a "successful generational change" and a "beacon function" for Lower Saxony.

In 2011, the annual Gender Research Day was also introduced, at which members of the university and the region present their research projects in gender and queer studies for discussion. In the following years, the ZFG was able to organise annual conferences (KEG/ FG 2011, LAGEN 2013), expand co-operations, such as with the Erasmus Mundus degree programme European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR) (since 2011), the Helene Lange Kolleg Queer Studies and Intermediality: Art - Music - Media Culture - Music - Media Culture (2013-2016) or the LAGEN, including the conference "Queering Migration Studies" (Oldenburg 2014).

The development of interdisciplinary and transnational collaborative research projects is of particular importance: The project "Gender knowledge in and between disciplines: critique, transformation and 'dissident participation' in (academic) knowledge production" (2015-2019) investigated conditions for the production of gender knowledge from the 1970s to the present day in an interdisciplinary comparison of biology, Computing Science and art and cultural studies. The research network "Gender, flight, admission policies. Processes of gendered inclusion and exclusion in Lower Saxony" (2016 - 2020) analysed admission and integration policies in Germany from a gender-theoretical perspective. The teaching research project "Transnational Perspectives in Gender Studies" (2019-2022) links (trans)national perspectives on a teaching and learning platform.

REGULAR ACTIVITIES
Events: Various perspectives on gender studies are regularly presented and discussed in public. Since 2017, they have been brought together in the three-part event series "Where Gender Burns: Current Relevance of Gender Studies in Science, Culture and Society", consisting of lectures, roundtables and half-day conferences as well as lunch talks. The spectrum of topics ranged from the threat to gender studies in the present day and specifically in individual countries such as Turkey to perspectives on interdisciplinary postcolonial approaches in gender studies and current developments during the pandemic.

Gender Research Day: This annual event offers the opportunity to exchange project ideas and research results, especially for the promotion of young researchers.

Publication series: The ZFG publishes two series: Studien Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung (since 2002, transcript Verlag Bielefeld) and Oldenburger Beiträge zur Geschlechterforschung (since 2004, BIS-Verlag Oldenburg)

FLYER on the history of the ZFG (2001-2021) as pdf for download (in English)