Miriam Brunnengräber M.A.

I am a research assistant in the project "Sexual Human Differentiation and Disability" and at the Institute of Sociology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

I studied Sociology and Educational Science in Mainz and graduated with a Master's degree in Sociology in 2019.

The focus of my research is the social problematization of 'disabled sexuality' in sex education. To this end, I am reconstructing the historical genesis of sexual pedagogical discourse, which turned the sexuality of disabled people into a pedagogical problem of action, beginning in the mid-20th century. In addition, I am ethnographically researching in-service training courses in sexual education, which I understand as part of this complex of problematizations. I am particularly interested in the ambivalent simultaneities of different forms of normalization as well as of empowerment and social regulation.

In my master's thesis I dealt with the concept of "sexual self-determination" as a value of liberal-democratic societies that is taken for granted today. Sexual education work with people with disabilities is also oriented towards this guiding idea of "sexual self-determination". It is based on the historically quite recent notion of sexuality as an intrinsic personal quality about which individuals should be able to decide 'freely'. In addition to the enabling dimensions of this self-determination topos, I ask in my research to what extent it can also be understood as an "imposition" in a certain way.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich