Irina Schmitt

Background

I defended my PhD thesis on young people’s negotiations of national belonging in Germany and Canada at Bremen University, Germany, in 2007 and joined the Department of Gender Studies in Lund as a postdoctoral researcher in 2008.  October 2010, I was Visiting Associate Professor at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia. 2011 I was hired as associate senior lecturer, and as senior lecturer since 2015. During 2011 and 2014, I served as director of undergraduate studies. 

My research explores power relations and experiences of the intersections of gender, sex and sexuality with ideas of national attributions and belonging. Grounded in trans- and queer-feminist educational research, I situate this work in organizations where knowledge is produced and the national is inscribed, such as schools and universities.
 

Research areas

• Queer-feminist studies
• Trans-feminist studies
• Feminist, queer-feminist and trans-feminist methodologies
• Justice, law, nation
• Justice and LGBTQI+ in schools and higher education

Ongoing research and teaching

Through various research projects, I have explored the negotiation of national belonging, children with LGBTQI+ parents and their experiences in school in a European collaborative project, equality work in academia, and strategies for LGBTQI+ equity work and queer educational justice in schools. My latest project explores how young and young adult transgender and nonbinary people negotiate their identities with the normative, nationally coded expectations of school. What do they perceive as supportive and what support would they have expected? Participants' analyses of schools highlights both concrete situations and overall structures where schools are failing them, and classrooms and schools that are actively working in a cis-normative way. The study, which is the first of its kind in the Swedish context, contributes to the growing field of trans_intersex research in Sweden, and to international trans- and queer-feminist educational research. The study clearly shows that gender identity is negotiated intersectionally in schools and that cis-normativity is co-produced with not least racism, and norms of class and ability. 

I teach, develop courses, co-ordinate courses and supervise theses together with colleagues at the Gender Studies Department's undergraduate and master's level courses, as well as the Faculty of Social Sciences' international master's programme, focusing on feminist theories and methodologies, feminist knowledge production and social negotiations of justice. I am part of the teaching team for a PhD course, and serve as co-supervisor and third reader.

Together with colleagues from different departments, I am responsible for and teach the course Gender and Diversity in Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Social Sciences’ courses for teaching in higher education, and give lectures on justice work in academia. I am also the Gender Studies Department's representative for Gender Equality and Equality Work.