Stefan Hirschauer is professor for sociological theory and gender studies at JGU. He is an expert in sociological theory, qualitative social research, sociology of the body, science studies and gender studies. He has contributed decisively to the development of these different fields by introducing new theoretical and methodological concepts. Among his best-known works are his book on the social construction of transsexuality, the anthology on the alienation of one's own culture – a standard work on ethnographic research, co-edited by him – as well as his repeatedly reprinted essays "On Doing Being a Stranger. The Practical Constitution of Civil Inattention" in which he explores the constitution of strangeness in elevators and "The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery", a paradigmatic ethnographic science study of medicine. He has received several awards for his publications and is regularly invited to lectures and workshops at sociological and other cultural studies institutions.
From 2013 to 2019, Stefan Hirschauer initiated and led the interdisciplinary DFG research unit "Un/doing Differences. Practices in Human Differentiation" at JGU and he has published several widely acclaimed articles and an anthology on this topic in recent years. As a GRC fellow, he will build on the research of this group in order to further develop his empirically grounded theory of human differentiation and thus make various phenomena of the cultural classification of people – according to age, gender, achievement, ethnicity, "race", nation, religion, etc. – comparable and translatable into each other.