Institutionalizing gender and diversity: Interdisciplinary perspectives

Abstract

Bringing together contributions on intersectional research, participatory methodologies, research ethics, and institutional responses to power abuse and sexual harassment, this introduction presents a special issue examining how universities have adopted, negotiated, and at times merely performed frameworks for gender and diversity. Drawing on case studies from Berlin and Germany more broadly, the contributions combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to make discrimination visible and measurable while critically interrogating the limits of such quantification. A recurring concern across the issue is epistemic: who counts as a knower, how positionality and reflexivity shape knowledge production, and how core concepts—such as "race"—travel unevenly across disciplinary and national contexts. Rather than resolving these tensions through a unified framework or glossary, the issue treats them as productive sites of interdisciplinary friction. Developed through a distinctive review process combining double-blind peer review with a collaborative in-person workshop, the issue closes with policy recommendations for university decision-makers, addressing challenges that extend beyond the German context to higher-education systems internationally. This introduction and the broader special issue emerged from the collaboration of four junior research groups funded under the Berlin University Alliance's cross-cutting theme "Diversity and Gender Equality": Fix the Numbers, Fix the Knowledge, Fix the System, and Fix the Institutions.