Gesa Mayer. Sociology of intimate relationships.
PhD sociologist (degree and doctorate earned from the University of Hamburg) and university educationalist (Master of Higher Education, also done at the University of Hamburg). Doctoral thesis on Consensual Non-Monogamy and Subjectification.
Pronous: she/her.
Having worked in various social science research projects, I am now employed at the Center for Teaching and Learning (ZLL), Hamburg University of Technology. In addition, I work as a freelance researcher, lecturer/teacher, and speaker focusing on relationship and family sociology, gender and queer studies. Member of the Critical Relationship Research Network.
Unpaid but indispensable: care work, culture production, feminism, and anti-fascism.
NEVER AGAIN IS STILL NOW. High time for clear words and consistent action—against all and any kind of anti-Semitism.
Focus of research: intimate relationships
In research, theory formation, teaching, and life, I have long, constantly afresh, and mostly with pleasure been engaged with questions such as these:
- Why and how do people live and love as couples, in open, polyamorous, or decidedly non-romantic relationships?
- What has the seemingly private choice of a monogamous or non-monogamous lifestyles got to do with social discourses, norms, gender and power relations?
- How accepted, discriminated against and/or contested are ‘non-conventional’ relationship and family models which do not easily fit into the scheme of hetero-, mono- and amatonormative marriage and couple relationships, two-parent families and blood ties?
- How can we design desire, connectedness, and being in relationships in less binary, patriarchal, hierarchical, and exclusive patterns—and instead in more inclusive, queer, emancipatory, future-oriented ways?
Areas of scientific work
Relationships, Intimacies, Genders
Consensual non-monogamies (e.g., polyamory, open relationships) and non-couple-centered bonds (e.g., friendship, relationship anarchy, object/AI affection). Non-conventional forms of parenting and family. Romantic love, marriage, and relationships in transition. Critical perspectives on mononormativity, heteronormativity, amatonormativity, anti-feminism, etc. Power-critical poststructuralist and queerfeminist sociologies.
Methods of Interpretative Qualitative Social Research.
Subjectification research. Discourse, dispositif, and biography research. (Further developments of) grounded theory methodology and
methodics. Qualitative learning research projects and research workshops.
Didactics of Higher Education
Didactics training for academic learning guides/tutors/exercise leaders. Challenge-based learning and continuous learning (in an international context). Didactics of
interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Learning and education research.