Celebrating 30 years of feminist geographies in the German-speaking countries Germany, Switzerland* and Austria

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development of feminist geographies in the three German-speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Since the emergence of feminist approaches in German-speaking geography in the 1980s, feminist geographers situated in these countries have worked closely together within the context of the Working Group “Geography and Gender”. The overview highlights cornerstones of the development of feminist geographies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as the Feminist Geography Newsletter (Feministisches GeoRundMail), the Doreen Massey Reading Weekends, the feminist geography student meetings (Feministisches Geograph_innentreffen) and the current DFG-research network “Feminist Geographies of the New Materialism”. By doing so, we try to appreciate both the historical development of feminist geographies and the current situation in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Highlighting both informal and institutionalized pillars of feminist geographies in these countries, we show how feminist geographies have moved from a marginalized position towards a vibrant field that gains more and more attention within the German-speaking geography community as a whole.

Keywords:

• Austria
• feminist collectives
• feminist geographies
• feminist organizing
• feminist politics of care
• Germany
• Switzerland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Notes on contributors

Sybille Bauriedl

Sybille Bauriedl studies and teaches feminist geography since 1992 at several German and Austrian universities and with urban and queer activist groups. Her research connects questions on gender relations, urbanization, sustainability, energy transition and digitalization. She recently worked in interdisciplinary projects on political ecology, African futures and Smart Cities and just starts as Professor of Integrative Geography at the European University Flensburg.

Nadine Marquardt

Nadine Marquardt is Professor for Social Geography at Bonn University. Her current research interests are in the fields of urban marginality, geographies of home, infrastructures and technopolitics. The approaches that she takes to those fields can be identified with traditions of work in governmentality studies, feminist science and technology studies, and studies of affect and matter.

Carolin Schurr

Carolin Schurr is Professor for Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern and recipient of “The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science”. Her work focuses on the intimate geographies of global surrogacy markets drawing on feminist theories of the body, feminist science and technology studies and geographies of affect.

Anne Vogelpohl

Anne Vogelpohl is an urban and feminist geographer at the University of Hamburg. Her work focuses on the role of consultants in urban policy making, on housing policies and on precarious labour in cities. She draws on critical urban theories, especially Henri Lefebvre, and feminist methodologies.