The Junior Research Group, “Fixing the System: Analyses in the Context of the History of Science,” examines how specific frameworks for gender and intersecting forms of structural oppression have and have not institutionalized over time. The research group is funded by Steering Committee 6 (SC6; Diversity and Gender Equality) of the Berlin University Alliance. The research group focuses on three case studies.

The first provides an overview  about how how girl-focused frameworks for international development arose and were integrated into United Nations policymaking in the 1980s and 1990s. This project shows how and why neoliberal and market-based forms of feminism prevailed in UN policy over alternatives such as anti-racist, anti-colonial, and socialist forms of feminism. The junior research group recently completed work on this first case study, which has been published as a monograph by University of Chicago Press in May 2025. The publication of the volume has been celebrated on July 7, 2025, with a book launch to which all members of the MvBZ community are cordially invited.

Research for the second and third case studies is still ongoing. The second case study provides a history of institutional responses to sexual harassment at Berlin universities since the mid-20th century. Members of the research group, including student assistants, have searched the archives of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin to find relevant documents. Some of the research questions are: 1. How and when were sexual harassment and sexual assault by students and staff at the university or in university-related spaces recognized as a problem? Which groups of people have spoken publicly about these issues, and how have they formulated their statements? 2. What kind of institutional measures have universities taken to combat sexual harassment and violence? When? In what contexts? How have these measures changed over time? 3. What forms of silence, defensiveness, and resistance accompanied efforts to identify and address sexual harassment and violence at universities? When? In what contexts? 4. At what points in time were sexual harassment and violence understood to be related to forms of oppression or structural power differences that intersect with gender—such as immigration status, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, or power relations with alleged perpetrators within academic hierarchies—and at what points were sexual harassment and violence presented as exclusively gender-specific? How did these competing views shape university policies on harassment and sexual violence at particular points in time? The junior research group does not focus on resolving individual cases, but takes an institutional approach to sexual harassment and violence. It values the privacy and safety of those involved in the research, especially those affected by/victims of sexual harassment and violence.

The third case study by the junior research group examines the history of colonial sciences between the 18th and early 20th centuries. It traces how the scientific understanding of biological sex (male, female, and intersex) developed in and through scientific racism and theories of ethnic and religious differences. In addition to these case studies, there is also ongoing cooperation with the three other junior research groups funded by SC6, which are based at the other BUA institutions. This includes joint work on a special issue of the Open Gender Journal, which will analyze the institutionalization of diversity initiatives in higher education and the resistance to them from interdisciplinary perspectives.

Dr. Sarah Bellows-Blakely is the leader of the junior research group, “Fixing the System: Analyses in the Context of the History of Science.” Her monograph, Girl Power? The Birth of Girl-focused Development in Nairobi, is in production at The University of Chicago Press and will be published in the spring of 2024. Her research has been published in The American Historical Review, Gender & History, and The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, among other places.