Conference: Contingency, power and data gaps
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Annual conference of the GeQuInDi network 2025
Topic: Contingency, power and data gaps in the focus of gender, queer, intersectionality and diversity studies
The GeQuInDi network is pleased to invite you to the annual conference 2025. Following the leitmotif of contingency, the conference poses questions about the role of indeterminacy, chance and openness in the interplay with dimensions of social inequality. To what extent does contingency challenge our patterns of thought and action? What potential does it hold for subversive strategies, transformation and intersectional perspectives? What opportunities does it open up? What risks does it harbor?
Theoretical background
Gender, queer, intersectionality and diversity studies question norms, power structures and epistemic orders. Contingency draws attention to the unforeseen, the random and the non-determined. As Butler (2002) emphasizes, making surprise, chance and contingency visible can unleash subversive potentials and create space for alternative realizations. At the same time, it is pointed out that various techniques and strategies are developed in order to control the random or to turn it into predictable elements (cf. Zollinger 1997).
From an intersectional perspective, a productive field of tension opens up: contingency can destabilize hierarchies and enable alternative forms of action and thought, while at the same time posing new challenges for concepts of justice and participation. For example, approaches from cultural studies show that contingency can act as a transmitter for something completely new (Kasabova/Langreiter 2007), while in digital contexts, chance and contingency are increasingly seen as productive elements (Chun 2008).
Date and location
- 10th to 12th December 2025
- Open Innovation Lab (OIL), Zapf-Haus 1, Ground Floor, Nürnberger Str. 38, 95448 Bayreuth
Preliminary conference programme
Wednesday, 10th December 2025
16:30 Welcome
17:00 Welcome by the spokespersons of the GeQuInDi network, welcome address by the university women's representative, presentation of the GO Forschung Award, thematic introduction with Veronika Rudolf & Elena Köstner
19:30 Conference dinner
Thursday, 11th December 2025
9:00 Welcome Coffee
Theoretical foundations & methodological reflections
9:30 Mishela Ivanova (Salzburg): Die Kontingenz des Intersektionalitätskonzepts
10:00 Selin Akgöz – Lea Luttenberger (Berlin): Intersektionalität messen? Der Kontingenzbegriff im Spannungsfeld quantitativer Methodenentwicklung zur Erhebung intersektionaler Ungleichheit
10:30 Florian Trompke (Bochum): Queere Glossographie. Begriffsarbeit zwischen Terminologiemanagement und Autotextuellem Essay
11:00 Break
11:15 Andrea Salanki – Jul Tirler (Wien): Visuelle Kontingenz: Bild-Collagen als epistemischer Zugang zu queeren Viewing Strategies
11:45 Nadine Jachmann (Bayreuth): Stress als Input: Eine adaptive Präsentation
12:15 Jannis Steinke (Braunschweig): Sociotechnical Practices of Objectivation: An empirical examination of AI-based health apps for diagnosis
12:45 Lunch break at the mensa
Poetry & Comics
13:30 Kaiyu Sun (Graz): Media and Gender: Contingency in Elizabeth Jennings’ ekphrastic poetry
14:00 Oliver Maaßberg (Mainz): „But maybe it normalizes it.” Subversion und Dekonstruktion medialer Reproduktion toxischer Maskulinität in Bojack Horseman
14:30 Gulbahar Shah (Kashmir): Frames of Disruption: Contingent identities in South Asian graphic narratives
15:00 Mario Faust-Scalisi (Bayreuth): (Digitale) Comic-Kommunikation – Kontingenz als intersektioneller solidarischer Aktivismus
15:30 Break
Spaces, places & inbetweeness
15:45 Leda-Sophie Moors (Regensburg): Subversive Welten? Die Canidia-Episoden des Horaz als Beispiel der (männlichen) Kontingenzbewältigung
16:15 Cornelia Thielmann (Bamberg): Von Inklusion zu Exklusion. Die Kontingenz von Fort- und Rückschritt am Beispiel der Barrierefreiheit von Burgen
16:45 Tamara Vitzthum (Mainz): Lobbys – (un)bestimmte Zonen des Übergangs
17:15 Break
17:30 Rutendo Lucinda Madzikanda (Bayreuth): Faith in Resistance: Shona women’s agency and decolonial feminism in Zimbabwean religious spaces
18:00 Ginevra Tsepiso Moruthoane (Bayreuth): Gender and Space: Reclaiming “feminine spaces” as tools for empowerment
19:00 Joint Dinner
Friday, 12th December 2025
9:00 Welcome Coffee
Contingency & gender in transition
9:30 Frank Schad (Regensburg): *Weibliche (Selbst)darstellungen aus dem Umfeld der Augustalität in der Patrix des früh- & hochkaiserzeitlichen Italien
10:00 Sarah Weichlein (Bamberg): Queering Classics – Repräsentation queerer Figuren in lateinischer Literatur trotz patriarchaler Strukturen
10:30 Axel Bannert (Halle): Emotional Practices in der Weimarer Republik
11:00 Break
Resistance, agency & visions
11:45 Lisa Weging (Bayreuth): Rauschen als Widerstand: Reverse Engineering als queer-feministische Strategie in Jake Elwes’ Machine Learning Por (2016)
11:00 Lana Vizjak (Eichstätt): Führung in der Lücke – Kontingenz und Care-Arbeit als Ressourcen für weibliche Karrierewege
11:30 Moritz Sowada – Miguel Zulaica y Mugica (Dortmund): Ermächtigung durch Bedrohungsrhetorik: Kontingenz in schulischen Trans*-Debatten
12:00 Lunch break at the mensa
12:45 Tabea Louis (Hamburg): Welches transformative Potential steckt in unklaren Fällen von Frauentötungen?
13:15 Ylva Staudigel (Siegen): Siri und ihre Mütter. Zur weiblichen Codierung von Medientechnik von den 1960er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart
13:45 Rabia Gül Yazar (Bayreuth): Verkörperte Daten: Intime Lebensbereiche im Zeitalter algorithmischer Gouvernementalität
14:15 Closing Discussion
Organisers
Veronika Rudolf, M.A., Research Associate in Media Studies, University of Bayreuth and spokesperson for the GeQuInDi network
PD Dr habil. Elena Köstner, Head of the ‘GO Forschung’ project, Gender Equality Service Centre, University of Bayreuth, spokesperson for the GeQuInDi network and ancient historian at the University of Regensburg