Intersectionality at German universities: empowering teaching staff as change agents with higher education didactic workshops

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dc.contributor.authorMergner, Julia
dc.contributor.authorPekşen, Sude
dc.contributor.authorLeišytė, Liudvika
dc.date.accessioned2026-01-16T13:54:26Z
dc.date.available2026-01-16T13:54:26Z
dc.date.issued2026-01-07
dc.description.abstractThe increasing diversity at German universities has been accompanied by the demand to widen participation among all groups of students. This challenges higher education teaching, requiring learning environments that acknowledge diverse experiences and needs. While diversity‐sensitive approaches have been the dominant response, they often address single diversity dimensions in isolation, neglecting intersectional interdependencies and structural power relations. An intersectional perspective, however, shifts the focus to power dynamics, knowledge production, and inclusive educational practices. This article argues that such an approach has a good potential to enable lecturers and students to become change agents by fostering critical thinking, reflective agency, and ethical commitment to dismantling systemic inequalities. This is particularly challenging in the German higher education system, where critical, antidiscriminatory pedagogical perspectives are mostly limited to certain disciplines. At the same time, the teaching staff enjoy extensive teaching autonomy, which provides them with freedom for individual engagement in this area. Therefore, implementing intersectional approaches in teaching requires targeted educational interventions that support teaching staff. Building on the concept of intersectional pedagogy, we introduce a case study of a higher education didactic workshop that was designed to raise awareness of intersectional perspectives in teaching. The findings highlight the potential of such workshops to influence teaching practices and promote the engagement of disciplinary teaching communities with intersectionality. This article concludes by discussing the implications for further developing workshop concepts and empowering teaching staff and students as agents of change within the German higher education system.en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2003/44657
dc.language.isoen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesSocial Inclusion; 14
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectchange agentsen
dc.subjectGerman higher educationen
dc.subjectintersectionalityen
dc.subjectteaching studentsen
dc.subjectuniversity didacticsen
dc.subject.ddc370
dc.subject.rswkIntersektionalität
dc.subject.rswkHochschulbildung
dc.subject.rswkHochschuldidaktik
dc.titleIntersectionality at German universities: empowering teaching staff as change agents with higher education didactic workshopsen
dc.typeText
dc.type.publicationtypeArticle
dcterms.accessRightsopen access
eldorado.dnb.deposittrue
eldorado.doi.registerfalse
eldorado.secondarypublicationtrue
eldorado.secondarypublication.primarycitationMergner, J., Pekşen, S., & Leišytė, L. (2026). Intersectionality at German Universities: Empowering Teaching Staff as Change Agents With Higher Education Didactic Workshops. Social Inclusion, 14, Article 9829. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.9829
eldorado.secondarypublication.primaryidentifierhttps://doi.org/10.17645/si.9829

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