Awards Ceremony 2022

• The Jenny Gusyk "INNOVATION AWARD" 2021 in the amount of 3.000 Euro was awarded to Juniorprofessor Judith Rauscher and Dr. Johanna Pitetti-Heil (Faculty of Philosophy, English Department I) for "gender forum - An Internet Journal for Gender Studies". The online journal gender forum plays a leading role in the publication landscape of gender and queer studies in Germany. The format of the open access platform enables researchers worldwide - and people without direct university access to literature - to engage with gender studies and gender equality issues. It should be emphasized that gender forum has dealt with gender studies issues in an intersectional and intercultural manner from the very beginning, and that the editors make a special effort to support young scholars and represent diversity when selecting guest editors and authors. This support and the intersectional self-image make an important contribution to improving equal opportunities within academia and thus support sustainability and innovation. Prof. Susanne Gruß has also been a member of the editorial team since October 2022.

• The Jenny Gusyk "FAMILY-FRIENDLY LEADERSHIP AWARD" in the amount of 1.000 Euro is awarded to Prof. Nadia Kutscher (Faculty of Human Sciences, Chair of Educational Assistance and Social Work). She receives the prize for her special understanding of leadership, to see her employees at the chair holistically, to include them at eye level and to take individual biographies into consideration. She sees team members with family responsibilities in a situation of "social inequality" and assumes her responsibility to actively ensure that there is room for relief and to justify this transparently in the team as a whole. Through her open communication and transparency in her actions, Prof. Kutscher succeeds in placing family awareness as a shared responsibility in the entire team. Her basic attitude of seeing herself more as a "partner" in leadership than as a "boss" results in a high degree of motivation among her employees and gives them the space to develop. Prof. Kutscher was nominated by Klara-Marie Niermann and Rainer Caruso.

• The Jenny Gusyk "YOUNG SCIENTIST AWARD" amounting to 1.000 Euro is awarded for an outstanding academic thesis in the field of Gender and Queer Studies at the University of Cologne. This year, Esto Mader was awarded for the dissertation at the Faculty of Human Sciences entitled "Handlungsfähigkeit in queeren Räumen in Berlin - Eine soziologische Studie über Handlungsfähigkeit in Praktiken der Un_Bestimmtheit". The dissertation is particularly impressive for its interweaving of complex theoretical framing and its sensitive approach to and empirical investigation of queer spaces. The work succeeds in a remarkably far-sighted and multi-layered investigation. In doing so, Esto Mader not only takes up the questions of individual and community, of privilege and marginalization, of "us" vs. "the others," of belonging and exclusion, of normality and coercive normativity, of "safer spaces" and threatening places, which are currently also discussed in the media. The study also reveals the spatial arrangements, affects, and norms that are altered, processed, and produced to produce queer spaces. These can be understood as responses to experiences of violence, marginalization, and exclusion. These queer spaces value what is otherwise devalued. In this production of space, various forms of agency emerge through the negotiation of visibility, participation, belonging, and safety.