A centerpiece of the Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe program is the independent field research that students carry out on a topic chosen by each student in consultation with the Program Director prior to arrival in Europe. Drawing on skills developed in the feminist and queer theory and methodology seminars, students select appropriate research methods and conduct a sustained research project with a transnational, cross-cultural, and comparative focus, based on resources located and/or developed by the student in the countries visited.

Below is a sampling of research conducted by past WGSE participants:

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

  • I Don’t Want to Be a Man. I Want to Be Just Me: Discursive Practices of Real Men. Attitudes Towards Masculinity Among Males in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
  • Sex Education and Hetero-normativity in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands.
  • The Status of Women in Science in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland.
  • Welfare Policies and Women’s Independence across Western and Central Europe.
  • Public Bathrooms as Gender-Policing Spaces in Germany, Netherlands, Poland and the UK.
  • Tracing Transmemories for Memorial Candle Grandchildren 
  • Empowered or Exploited? Women and the Sex Industry in Eastern and Western Europe. 
  • Gender Advertising in Dutch, German and Czech Women’s Magazines. 
  • Lots of Mothers and a Father too? Parental Leave Policies and Gendered Representations of Care in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands 
  • There Is No Business like Show Business: Male Sex Work and the Performance of Power and Control.
  • Same-Sex Marriages:  A Question of Legitimacy, A Problem of Privilege 
  • Research Experiences Exploring Trans Social Policy in Europe: Gender-Sensitive Sexuality Education as a Tool for Gender Mainstreaming in Europe.
  • Parental Resources and Reproductive Rights within the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic
  • The Impacts of Fatphobia on Fat Women in the Netherlands and Germany

Religion

  • Catholic Politics: How Relations Between Church and State Affect the Lives of European Women.
  • Queer and Jewish in Europe: An Oral History Project
  • Immigration and Muslim Women’s Issues in the Netherlands and Germany. 
  • Religion and Reproductive Rights in Germany, the CR and Poland. 
  • Towards a Jewish Women’s Identity: The European Feminist Approach.

Art

  • European Public Art focusing on Violence against Women. 
  •  LGBTQ Art, Queer Space, and Creativity: Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic
  • Gender Issues in the Graffiti and Street Art in Berlin, London, and Krakow 

Political Science

  • Bodies and Borders: Gendered Figures in Public Spaces as Sites of National Identity Formation in Krakow, Prague, and Berlin.
  • The European Women’s Lobby’s Policies concerning Sex Trafficking 
  • Women in Transition: The Post-Socialist Experience of Women in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
  • Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women in Europe 
  • Barriers Beyond Legislation: Abortion Access and Pro-Choice Activism in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands. 
  • Autonomy, Anarchism, and the Individual: Accounts of Creating and Living in Collective Space in the Netherlands and Germany 
  • Legislating Lust: A Comparative Analysis of the Legal Frameworks on Prostitution. 
  • The Effects of the Anti-Genderist Movement on the Pro-Abortion Rights NGO Women on Web

Cross-Cultural Studies

  • The Perception of Fatness in the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, the UK, and the US
  • Parental Gender Roles and “Male Role Models” in Lesbian-Parented Families: Across Three Generations in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic 
  • Transgender Identity in Europe from a Cross-cultural Perspective. 
  • Policy-making and Accessibility: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland.
  • Affective Engagements in Online Spaces: A case study of Dutch, German and US Feminist-of-Color Collectives.
  • Sitting at the Table of Power: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of the Context and Meaning of Disability Inclusion and Activism in the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA. 
  • Going and Growing Home: The Postponed Homecomings of Mixed-Race American, Afro-German and Dutch Indonesian Women. 
  • Towards a Geography of (Queer) Urban Sexualities: A Comparative Survey and Examination of LGBT Spaces and Queer Sites of Resistance in Berlin, Prague and Krakow. 
  •  I am Not a Feminist, But . . .  Different Conceptualizations of Feminism in Germany, the Netherlands, the CR and Poland.
  • Latine Migrants in Europe
  • Vietnamese Migrant Communities in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland
  • White Innocence, and Responses to the Traveling Black Body in The Netherlands, Germany, and Czechia
  • Experiences of LGBTQ Individuals in Counseling and Therapy Services in Germany, the Czech Republic, and the US

Anthropology

  • Combatting Femme Invisibility through Femme-inist Ethnography. 
  • Historical Insights into Dutch and German Cultures through Swear Words