The Project

Life-scientists are currently seeking complex conceptions of sex and gender to improve research and health care for everybody. This project analyzes the concepts and metaphors that life-scientists are using to do this. The aim is to improve these conceptual tools for a dynamic and pluralist understanding of the sexes.

The project is part of a larger research horizon on integrating methods in philosophy of science in practice, critical existential phenomenology, aesthetics, and complexity theory.

Institutions
Since 09/2022: GenderSci Lab, Harvard University

Funding
Since 2024: Self-funded

01/2023 – 01/2024: NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellowship (019.221SG.009)

Unfunded grant applications and project designs
2025: NWO VENI application on interdisciplinary translation in sex and gender sensitive health research (finalist; not granted)

2022: DFG Walter Benjamin Grant application on exploring enactivist approaches and pluralist metaphors for the sexes in the life sciences (withdrawn due to administrative delays; not granted)

Publications associated with this project

*Thinius, A. “The Double Historicity of Sex and Gender.” Arch Sex Behav (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03308-x

Boulicault, Marion, Annika Gompers, Lauren Aalami, et al. 2025. “Three Maxims for Countering Sex Essentialism in Scientific Research.” Biology of Sex Differences 16 (1): 83. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13293-025-00748-x.

Ichikawa, K., Boulicault, M., Thinius, A., DiMarco, M., Murchland, A. R., Maldonado, B., Higgins, A. S., & Richardson, S. S. (2025). Sex in the medical machine: How algorithms can entrench bioessentialism in precision medicine. Big Data & Society, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251381674 AAM: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13369533

*Thinius, A. & Trappes, R. 2024 [blog]. “Binary Categories, Messy Individuals” BJPS Short Reads, https://www.thebsps.org/short-reads/binary-categories-thinius-trappes/

*Thinius, A. & R. Trappes. In Press. “Sex Traits and Individual Differences: Stabilising and Destabilising Binary Categories in Biological Practice.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/731829. [Preprint here].

*Thinius, A. 2024. “Sex-Gender in Life-Science Research: Conceptual Renegotiations and an Enactivist Vision”, in: Dufourcq, A. et al. (eds.) Purple Brains: Working on the Limits of Feminist Philosophy. Radboud University Press. https://doi.org/10.54195/HSOV8373_CH08.

Talks and conference contributions

with Roughgarden, J., Griffiths, P., et al. Session Panelist on “Biology and the Sexes,” International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), Porto, Portugal, 2025.

*Thinius, A. “The Specter That Haunts Binary Sex-Gender Categories: Conceptual Renegotiations of Sex and Gender in Health Research” Jindal School of Public Health and Human Development, JGUniversity, Sonipat, India, 2025.

[Background media interview] “How Women are Disadvantaged in Medicine [in German].” Doktor Whatson, 2025. https://youtu.be/EdTrdS-A_do?si=uW-v5zzxJnQw-3SE

Ichikawa, K., Boulicault, M. et al. “Big Data, Precision Medicine, and Sex/Gender: From ‘Desirable Bias’ to Binary Sex Essentialism,” Department for History and Philosophy of Science Cambridge University, 2024; Also at 5th International Data Power Conference, IIIT-Bangalore, India and the University of Graz, Austria, 2024.

*Thinius, Alex and Rose Trappes “Sex traits and individual differences: Stabilising and destabilising binaries in biological practice” Lisbon International Conference in Philosophy Of Science (LICPOS), Lisbon, 07/2023

*Thinius, A. “Gender Requires Participatory Sense-Making: Ontological and Normative Consequences,” Social Justice and E- Cognition: Paths Forward, University of Wollongong, 06/2022. [Preprint here]

*Thinius, A. “Joel’s ‘Mosaic’ Conception of Sex: Limits and Potentials for a Dynamic and Pluralist Account of the Sexes,” Philosophical Tradition in Context Colloquium, UvA, 03/2022.