Visiting PhD researcher: Rieke Schröder

Rieke Schröder holds a B.A. in Social Work from the University of Applied Science Osnabrück, Germany (2016-2019), and a M.Sc. in Global Refugee Studies from Aalborg University Copenhagen (2019-2021). During her studies, she received scholarships from the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. Schröder spent a semester abroad at the Lebanese American University in Beirut in 2018.

Since March 2022, she is a PhD student at the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg - University Copenhagen and received a PhD scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Schröder is also on the editorial board of the journal Women, Gender & Research, where she is currently co-editing a special issue on Decolonisation.

What is your research about?
My PhD project explores the lived experiences of LGBTIQ+ refugees in Berlin and Copenhagen, two cities that offer a range of support for queer people who are in the process of claiming asylum or who were successful doing so. I am interested in LGBTIQ+ refugees’ experiences ‘beyond the asylum regime’, meaning I do not focus on the refugee status determination process. Instead, through interviews and fieldwork with LGBTIQ+ refugees as well as employees and volunteers within the realm of LGBTIQ+ refugee support, I investigate which other spaces are of importance when LGBTIQ+ negotiate their identities in the process of making a home. Taking an intersectional queer approach, I explore how sexuality, gender identity, racialisation, citizenship, class, and age, intersect, establishing power dynamics and different access to support offers.

Research interests: forced displacement, queer migration, feminist geographies, queer temporalities, homonationalism, decolonisation, intersectionality, whiteness

Read more about Rieke Schröder and her work