On the 8th and 9th of August, Jonatan Kurzwelly held a kick-off workshop for the new research project, Transdisciplinary Conceptualisation and Measurement of Identities and Discrimination. The consortium will critically examine how socio-cultural classifications are used in biomedical and social research, and develop alternatives to current practices.
Analyses of the effects of discrimination – from health equity studies to research on political polarisation and extremism – often rely on fixed categories such as nationality, ethnicity, religion or migration status, treating category membership as a proxy for what people experience. But neither the identities ascribed to people nor their effects are fixed. The same person may be perceived as belonging to a minoritised group in one context but not in another. Which characteristics prompt identity ascription – such as an accent, surname, appearance, or legal status – and whether it leads to disadvantage depend on the setting and the people involved. Nevertheless, research often treats assignment to a category as if it constituted a stable and uniform exposure.
The goal of this transdisciplinary project is to conceptualise, develop, and validate new ways of measuring how social identities shape people’s experiences and health outcomes while avoiding the reification and essentialisation of identity categories. The findings of this project will inform healthcare interventions and policies aimed at preventing discrimination.
The collaborative project brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers:
- Dr Joanna Karolina Malinowska – Faculty of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
- Dr Magdalena Muszynska-Spielauer – Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy and Scientific Method, Johannes Kepler University Linz
- Dr med. Luisa Offenberg – Institute for Family Medicine, University of Bonn, University Hospital of Bonn
- Dr Rieka von der Warth – Institute for Family Medicine, University of Bonn, University Hospital of Bonn
- Dr Jonatan Kurzwelly – PRIF