About
Jannis Ruhnau serves as a Research Associate in the Department of Gender Sociology under Prof. Dr. Diana Lengersdorf at the University of Bielefeld since August 2024. He maintains dual affiliations with the Faculty of Sociology and the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies (IZG), with office locations in Building X C3-237 and Building X B3 respectively. His institutional connections extend to the BiSEd members of the Faculty of Sociology and the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology where he is listed as a doctoral researcher.
Ruhnau completed his studies in Sociology and Islamic Studies at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg between 2012-2020, culminating in a Master's thesis titled 'I'm still a woman as a lesbian' - On the relationship between gender and desire in the (re-)construction of narrative and sexual identity in interviews with women of two generations. Prior to his current position, he worked as a Fellow and research assistant at the Graduate School 'Gender as Experience' of the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies (May 2021-August 2024) and as a research assistant at the Freiburg Forest Research Institute (2019-2021).
His research critically examines how bodies are perceived and experienced through narrative frameworks, particularly focusing on marginalized gender identities. Working at the intersection of phenomenological and poststructuralist concepts, Ruhnau connects Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of the felt body with Michel Foucault's notion of self-relationship to develop methodological approaches for analyzing self-relationships in narrative interviews. His work challenges traditional subject-centered perspectives by emphasizing relational construction within interview situations.
Ruhnau's dissertation project 'Feeling Strength, Seeing Muscles - Narrated Body-Self Relationships of Trans* and Non-Binary People and Cisgender Lesbians in Strength Training' reveals how strength training creates possibilities for relating to oneself in ways that can obscure painful discrimination and devaluation procedures, instead generating imagination of a strong and self-sufficient self. His research demonstrates how the normatively shaped body through others' gazes becomes perceptible in new ways through self-orientation, altering both bodily sensation and visual perception of the body.
As a doctoral researcher at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology, Ruhnau contributes to the university's strategic research focus on 'The Changing World' which examines complex processes of individual and social dynamics. His work exemplifies Bielefeld University's principle of 'Transcending Boundaries' through interdisciplinary approaches that cross between scientific cultures and between science and society.
