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 critical existential phenomenology, aesthetics, and complex systems theories.

Institutions and Funding

January 2023 – January 2024
GenderSci Lab, Harvard University
NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellowship (019.221SG.009)

Publications associated with this project

*Thinius, Alex and Rose Trappes. Forthcoming. “Sex Traits and Individual Differences: Stabilising and Destabilising Binaries in Biological Practice” British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

*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. http://doi.org/10.54195/HSOV8373_CH08.

Conference contributions associated with this project

Richardson, S.S., Boulicault, M, Ichikawa, K. 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.

*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.