Possible themes for PhD projects in this research area are:

• Identity Formation and Subjectification: How do biomedical, reproduction-technological, and genetic innovations with transnational impact form individual and collective identities? What effect does this have on experiences of corporeality, genderdness, kinship, and family (also refer to the research area “Transformation of the Gender Order”)?
• Gender Relations: What role does bioscientific knowledge play in the neutral—and apparently objective and scientific—establishment of the bipolarity of the genders? Are new pressures to make decisions and moral obligations produced within the context of genetic and neuroscientific knowledge whose primary addressees are women? Or is it possible to identify processes of the deconstruction of gendered bipolarity approaching a “continuum” (also refer to the research area “Transformation of the Gender Order”)?
• Knowledge Production and Appropriation: What forms of the transfer and translation of biomedical knowledge are establishing themselves? How are relationships between experts and laypersons changing?
• Democratization and Political Decision-Making Processes: What political significance do new models of participation (for instance, in consensus conferences and open councils) and patient and self-help groups have in the area of biomedicine? What is the relationship between institutionalized bioethical and biomedical expertise and claims to participation by those affected and the public? What does the “bioethical boom” mean for the shape and legitimation of political decision-making processes?
• Processes of Dominance, Globalization, and (International) Social Inequality: What new forms of (international) inequality result due to the varying availability of biomedical innovations and products? How are health care and prevention regimes communicated, advertised, and commercially exploited on a global level? What new forms of regulation develop in a transnational biomedical sphere of activity (e.g., the international control of epidemics: the opening and closing of nation-state borders within the context of the swine or bird flu)?