Researching the Un/Speakability of Gender-Based Violence in Academia: Promoting an Interdisciplinary, Intersectional, and Multi-Level Context-Oriented Approach
Abstract
This paper introduces an interdisciplinary, context-oriented, and multi-level approach to analysing the un/speakability of gender-based violence (GBV) in academia. It argues that in-depth understandings of GBV require attention to nationally and culturally embedded contexts alongside interdisciplinarity. Drawing on cultural studies, gender studies, and linguistics, the approach adopts a social constructivist perspective in which gender and sexuality are shaped by power relations and intersectional positionalities manifested in (non-)verbal practices and performances. Building on insights from the UniSAFE study, the contribution suggests going beyond existing approaches by proposing a multi-level, discourse-based framework encompassing macro-/socio-cultural, meso-/organisational and micro-/individual dimensions. This allows for a profound and contextualised understanding of the ambiguities, grey zones and difficulties of voicing GBV. It also links individual lived experiences to larger systems of power. The proposed research design integrates qualitative and quantitative methods, using multiple sites, researchers and sources. It offers a robust framework to examine GBV in Central and Eastern European academia and beyond.
Keywords
Gender-based violence, un/speakability, academia, interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, multi-level analysis
Author Biography
Christa Binswanger
Christa Binswanger is a senior lecturer and professor of Gender & Diversity Studies at the University of St. Gallen’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her academic interests include gender, diversity, intersectionality, queer affect studies, critical sexuality studies, gender-based violence, and inclusive language. She began her academic journey in German and Slavic Studies before turning to Gender Studies. Later she developed her research and teaching interests further into the field of Diversity, always considering the question of power relations and inequalities. She is a board member of the Swiss Association for Gender Studies, a spokesperson for the Conference of Institutions for Women’s and Gender Studies in German-speaking Countries in Switzerland and a member of the advisory board of the Network for Transdisciplinary Research of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences.
Melanie Fleischhacker
Melanie Fleischhacker is a PhD student and researcher in Applied Linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt. In her MA thesis, she analysed the discursive representations of gender and sexuality in EFL textbooks. In her Applied Linguistics PhD, she focuses on questioning practices in coaching. Her research interests are thus twofold: Her work centres on helping professions, examining, for instance, how the coach-client interaction shapes and contributes to the coaching process. Using authentic data, she pays special attention to solution-oriented questioning practices and clients’ responses. In addition, her work explores the interrelatedness of gender, sexuality, and discourse. This includes research on gendered and discriminatory experiences in leadership coaching and female football as well as on the lived experiences of (young) female footballers and their identity constructions.
Eva-Maria Graf
Eva-Maria Graf is Associate Professor in Applied and English Linguistics at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria). She received her PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. In her research, she focuses on helping professions with a special focus on workplace coaching. She is the founder of Linguistic Coaching Process Research (LCPR) and led the first international and interdisciplinary research project on questioning practices in coaching. Her other major research interest is in gender ideologies in language and social interactions in contexts such as football, leadership and academia and in the tradwife movement on social media, in particular in Instagram Reels. She applies qualitative methods such as Critical Discursive Psychology, Reflexive Thematic Analysis, Conversation Analysis and Multimodal Social Semiotics and also works with mixed-methods approaches in both mono- and interdisciplinary projects.
Andrea Zimmermann
Andrea Zimmermann is a senior researcher in Gender Studies at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (IZFG) at the University of Bern. She obtained her PhD from the University of Zurich and has served as co-leader of the graduate programme Gender Studies at the University of Basel for several years. Zimmermann leads several research projects on Gender, Diversity and Inclusion in cultural and academic institutions, employing a mixed-methods approach. Her further research interests include topics related to gender equality, gender-based violence, masculinities, critique, theatre and emotions. Zimmermann teaches on these topics at various universities. In collaboration with Dr. Dominique Grisard (CSR), she established “Art of Intervention” in 2018, a platform that facilitates numerous collaborations with cultural institutions to foster exchange between academia, art and public discourse.