People with disabilities are often socially excluded from the field of sexuality. Their desire and the way society deals with it are also problematized in socio-educational and activist discourses as ‘disabled sexuality’ (in the sense of socially prevented sexuality). The sub-project analyzes sexual education advising and support services for people with disabilities as a field of “sexual human differentiation” that responds to this circumstance. From a sociology of knowledge perspective, it asks how sexuality is produced as an ability in sexual education discourses and practices and how this is linked to the categorization of bodies and persons as ‘disabled’ or to undoing disability. To this end, the production, communication and application of various forms of knowledge related to sexuality and disability will be examined ethnographically and through discourse analysis.

The project starts with the fact that human categories are not only perceived, but can also be made the subject of reflexive self-relations. It examines processes of reflexive human differentiation in the case of gender- and sexuality-related self-problematizations. It focuses on self-positionings that those affected experience as fragile or inappropriate. It analyses how individuals problematize their belonging to gender and sexual categories in confrontation with cultural norms, institutional discourses and social expectations – be it in the course of physical limitations, categorical discomfort or the search for “suitable” identities. The TP examines three constellations: (1) sexual counseling and therapy as an individual space for reflection, (2) peer groups as a collective context for negotiation and (3) digital discourse spaces as a trans-situational framework for categorical (re-)formations. It traces how affiliations are not only learned or ascribed, but also reflexively processed.

The task of the project is to develop and implement formats of responsive science communication for the Collaborative Research Center 1482: Human Differentiation. The sub-project accompanies research processes and processes their results in order to make them publicly communicable. With podcasts and local discussion groups, it establishes formats for communication with the non-scientific public. In addition, it monitors and analyzes the SFB’s impact on the public and conducts an internal resonance analysis. In this way, it contributes to the SFB’s self-reflection and the optimization of its public communication.

The project continues the concept of responsive science communication and expands it to include the guiding idea of resonance spaces: encounter formats in which scientific, artistic and everyday forms of knowledge enter into an exchange. An emphasis is placed on dialogical and participatory encounter formats beyond the academic sphere. In cooperation with educational institutions as well as arts and cultural institutions, topics of human differentiation are made tangible in a sensual, discursive and aesthetic way. Invited artistic fellows
and regional partners work with the SFB to create formats ranging from performance, discussion and workshop. The results of these three fields of action – media formats, educational work, artistic cooperation – will lead to a bilingual, multimedia online publication that documents, reflects on and makes internationally accessible resonance spaces as a digital platform.

The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the scoping workshop “Teaching Qualitative Social Research: Perspectives for the Future” with 31,000 euros. The workshop, which was initiated under the leadership of Tobias Boll together with the board of the “Methods of Qualitative Social Research” section of the DGS, aims to make the teaching of qualitative methods sustainable as a central aspect of the adequate training of future generations of social scientists.

Recent and future social developments, such as digitalization or an erosion of trust in science, but also institutional and structural changes in university education, make it necessary to intensively reflect on and reassess the current status and challenges for qualitative methodology.

The workshop brings together relevant experts from various areas of qualitative social research and methodology. Their aim is to jointly develop future scenarios for qualitative methodology teaching, identify necessary reorientations and think of ways to realize them. They do this in a moderated participatory process in which they develop perspectives across locations and paradigms. The results will be published in a position paper, which is intended to have an impact on the future discussion and realization of qualitative methodology as a document with a field-wide impact.