About me

I have been teaching and publishing in Gender & Sexuality Studies since 2011 and been a PhD researcher / prae doc assistant in Gender Studies at the University of Vienna since 2017. After my BA at the University of Vienna (Austria) and the Open University (UK), which focused on transcultural communication, gender studies, and political theory, I completed an MSc in Gender & Sexuality Studies at Birkbeck, University of London (UK), in 2012. I then began an MA in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Vienna, which I didn’t finish (or haven’t finished yet).

One of my main ‘academic’ interests (which is also one of my interests in ‘life’) lies in the drawing, transgressing and blurring of boundaries. This includes, for example, the making and unmaking of boundaries between sexualities and relationships as well as between academia, art, and activism. These boundaries are also entangled with power-laden inclusions and exclusions, including those at universities. Thus, supporting emancipatory spaces within university frameworks is important to me, and a subject of perpetual failing as well as more or less peaceful negotiations with myself.

I have facilitated courses and workshops as well as published on topics such as intimacies/sexualities/relationships, im-/possibilities of emancipatory learning spaces, and negotiations of academia and activism in LGBTIQ* contexts. My PhD project is centred around boundary-drawing within and between LGBTIQ* activism and academia, with a focus on enactments of knowledge and legitimacy as well as intersectional inclusions and exclusions.

I have also been part of other projects that have attempted to critically address such inclusions and exclusions. For example, I have co-founded the international, bi-annual Non-Monogamies and Contemporary Intimacies conference series that seeks to bring together academics, activists, artists, therapists/counsellors and (other) practitioners, as well as the working group on Inter*Trans_Nonbinary in the Austrian Gender Studies Association.

Recent publications

2021     En, Boka/Grenz, Sabine, 2021: Beate Kortendiek/Birgit Riegraf/Katja Sabisch (Hrsg.), 2019: Handbuch Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. 1556 Seiten. 149,99 Euro" [Buchrezension]. GENDER – Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 21 (1), S. 157–159.
Online: Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft (budrich-journals.de)

2020     En, Boka. Categorisation and Recognition: Musings on Misfitting and Misunderstanding. In: En, Michael (ed.) Truths, Trust and Translation: A festschrift, love letter and thank you to Michèle Cooke, 85–100. Peter Lang.

2020     En, Boka & En, Michael; mit En-Griffiths, David; Pilz, Felix; Pöll, Mer; Rosenthaler, Max. Beziehung(s)formen im queeren Alltag. In: Schadler, Cornelia & Raab, Michel (eds.) Polyfantastisch? Nichtmonogamie als emanzipatorische Praxis, 45–63. Unrast-Verlag.

2019     En, Michael & En, Boka. “Coming out” … as a translator? Expertise, identities and knowledge practices in an LGBTIQ* migrant community translation project. Translation Studies, 12(2), 213–230.Full

list of publications (pdf)

Interests

• boundaries and overlaps between academia, activism and art
• (especially marginalised) intimacies, sexualities, relationships
• participatory/emanzipatory and queer/feminist approaches to research as well as teaching and learning
• intersectionality
• feminist technoscience studies
• feminist/queer translation