My name is Maik Wiesen and I have been working as a research assistant in the Collaborative Research Center “Human Differentiation” since October 2022. My work is also associated with the “Body Sociology” working group at the Institute of Sociology, where I am currently working on my dissertation on sexual education counseling services for people with disabilities. Previously, I completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg and a Master of Science in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oxford. During my studies, I also worked as a tutor and assistant researcher at the Max Weber Institute in Heidelberg, where I supported the teaching and research activities of the Chair of Methods of Empirical Social Research and Social Structure Analysis. I also worked as a student assistant for the “General Population Survey of the Social Sciences” at the Leibniz Institute in Mannheim.
Main research areas
- Sociology of the Body
- Gender, sexuality, disability
- Ethnography
- Social and cultural anthropological theories
Research assistant
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 counseling 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.
