The Center for Gender and Diversity Research is an interdisciplinary and interfaculty research institute. Its aim is to foster a dynamic exchange between research and the public, in accordance with the Institutional Strategy „Research – Relevance – Responsibility“ at the University of Tübingen. The Center provides a central platform for research on questions of gender and diversity.
In a society of proliferating networks, multiple fragmentations, and a paradoxical simultaneity of equality and inequality, differentiations between people is crucial to the organisation of social life and participation. This applies both to the acknowledgement of difference, and to questions of distributive justice. The search for answers to socially virulent questions of differentiation requires both empirical knowledge of the social status quo, and epistemological reflections on how established patterns of observation reproduce social structures. Questions of gender and diversity here often occupy a transversal position. An understanding of the growing complexity of these discourses - especially at the intersection of research and other fields - requires an interdisciplinary approach to the relevant topics, and a making aware of potentials of action and intervention.
The concepts 'gender' and 'diversity' are here understood as focal points to accessing interdisciplinary research. In this context, the Center for Gender and Diversity Research contributes to a theoretical and methodical formulation of both forms of knowledge.
Within the Center's research profile, 'gender' and 'diversity' are not understood as objective and 'natural' properties of people or groups. Instead, they enable knowledge about complex and multi-layered processes of classification and categorisation of people and groups, and their social consequences. Both interdisciplinary research on processes of differentiation, and the reflexive consideration of the underlying epistemological principles are part of the Center's research profile, and are understood as a contribution to a critical reflection of social practices.
