November 2023 – Frankfurt Forum Ensemble – What We Talked and Debated About Intersectionality and Gender/Sex at the Forum (Frankfurt, Germany, October 2024)

Last fall, the Intersectionality Training Institute’s Co-Directors of Programs, Greta Bauer and Lisa Bowleg, independently received invitations to the 36th Ernst Strüngmann Forum. What’s the Forum you ask? Yeah, we asked the same question. The Forum is an independent scientific group that facilitates multidisciplinary discussion on themes (e.g., sex and gender) that demand diverse perspectives to expand and advance understanding of the themes. Think of the Forum as an intellectual retreat (with travel and lodging expenses paid)! where the group spends the entire week (October 8-13, 2023) discussing the assigned themes. Greta was invited to be the lead author on a background paper on how gender/sex inform intersectional understandings of operationalization and measurement. Lisa was invited to lead a background paper on how gender/sex inform intersectional understandings of structural inequalities on health. The Forum also invited many other top scholars in the field, including longtime Intersectionality Research Salon saloniste, Dr. Tonia Poteat. We hope you will join Greta, Tonia and Lisa (and likely, some others from the Forum) for this bird’s eye view salon about our Forum experiences and types of intersectionality-related gender/sex toLast fall, the Intersectionality Training Institute’s Co-Directors of Programs, Greta Bauer and Lisa Bowleg, independently received invitations to the 36th Ernst Strüngmann Forum. What’s the Ernst Strüngmann Forum you ask? Yeah, we asked the same question. The Forum is an independent scientific group that facilitates multidisciplinary discussion on themes that demand diverse perspectives to identify knowledge gaps, ask novel questions, and fill existing gaps. Think of the Forum as an intellectual retreat in Frankfurt, Germany (with travel and lodging expenses paid!) where a multidisciplinary group of scholars, scientists and experts spends an entire week (October 8-13, 2023) discussing the Forum’s core theme. The topic of the October 2023 Forum was how to conceptualize and operationalize sex, gender and their entanglements in research, practice, and policy. Greta wrote an invited background paper, titled Intersectionality, Sex/Gender Entanglement, and Research Design. Lisa, in collaboration with two doctoral students, wrote an invited background paper titled, How Interlocking Systems of Structural Oppression Shape Health and Health Inequities for Intersectionally Oppressed Groups. The Forum was intense, and intellectually stimulating and challenging. You won’t want to miss the next salon which will feature a group of Forum participants chatting about what they learned and talked about at the Forum. We invite you to join Drs. L. Zachary DuBois (2023 Intersectionality Summer Intensive alumn) and Anelis Kaiser Trujillo, Chairs of the October Forum; Dr. Lu Ciccia, longtime Intersectionality Research Salon saloniste, Dr. Tonia Poteat, Greta, and Lisa for this bird’s eye view salon about our time at the Forum and the types of discussions that we had about sex/gender and their entanglements, and of course, intersectionality.pics that came up at the Forum.