Wibke Straube

As a Senior Lecturer I work as a reseacher and teacher at the Centre for Gender Studies and as a research coordinator for GEXcel International Collegium. 

My research focusses on the intersections of trans subjectivity in connection to questions of environmental pollution and the material-semiotic notions of nature and naturalness.

Ongoing research: 

Trans*Creative. Health, Violence and Environment in Trans Cultural Production (Kone Foundation, 2020 – 2024, project partners: Lotta Kähkönen (PI, Turku University), Luca Tainio (Helsinki University), James MacDonald (UniArts Helsinki) and Kuutti Kiperä (artist)).

Past projects: 

Trans health in Värmland (Region Värmland, 2020 – 2023, with Ida Linander (Umeå University) and Andreas Henriksson (Karlstad University).

Doctoral thesis: 

Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes: A Transfeminist Reading of Utopian Sensibility and Gender Dissidence in Contemporary Film, Linköping University, 2014. 

Keywords: transgender liveabilities, world-making and survival; utopias; art and cultural production; trans health and wellbeing; environmental crisis and environmental pollution; queer, trans, and more-than-human relations; feminist posthumanities; cultural studies; transgender studies.

I teach a range of courses both on the MA and BA level in transgender studies, feminist methodologies including new feminist materialisms and environmental humanities.

My perspective on teaching is mainly formed by an aim to create a space for collaborative learning and is driven by an activist formed understanding of knowledge creation and exchange. Teaching students in the field of intersectional feminist theory as well as transgender and queer studies allows to create fully engage in knowledge production and reflections that bridge activism and academic practices.

Occasionally, I teach PhD courses that link to trans studies, cultural studies and environmental humanities.

• 2025 -  Associate Professor, Department for Social and Psychological Studies, Unit Gender Studies, Karlstad University.
• 2015 – 2025  Senior Lecturer, Department for Social and Psychological Studies, Unit Gender Studies, Karlstad University.
• 2009 - 2014 Doctoral Studies, Department of Thematic Studies/ Unit of Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. Thesis title: Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes. A Transfeminist Reading of Utopian Sensibility and Gender Dissidence in Contemporary Film.
• 2002 Master of Arts in Gender and Media Studies from the University of Sussex, UK.

Mehrabi, Tara, Wibke Straube. 2024. “Unsettling Intimacies: On World-Making Practices with the Other in Minoosh Zomorodinia’s Installation Knots and Ripples” Nora - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. 

Straube, Wibke. 2024. “Molecular Rebellions. Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Aesthetics of Contamination in Trans Performance Art.” NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 32 (3), 253–265. 

Straube, Wibke. 2024. “Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals,” Hormonal Theory: Rebellious Cascades, edited by Andrea Ford, Sone Erikainen, Roslyn Malcolm, Lisa Raeder, Celia Roberts, Bloomsbury Academic Press. 

Straube, Wibke, Ida Linander and Andreas Henriksson. 2023. Vård för transpersoner i Värmland. Report.

Straube, Wibke. 2021. “Ecological Aesthetics of Intimate Otherness in Swedish Trans Cinema.” Lambda Nordica 25 (3-4): 79-102. 

Straube, Wibke. 2020. “Posthuman Ecological Intimacy, Waste, and the Trans Body in ‘Nånting måste gå sönder’.“ In: Douglas Vakoch (ed.), Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature. 54 – 78. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. 

Straube, Wibke. 2020. ”Screening Non-Binary and Trans Bodies.” Special Issue. Screen Bodies 5 (1), Summer 2020. 

Straube, Wibke. 2019. “Toxic Bodies: Ticks, Trans Bodies, and the Ethics of Response-Ability in Art and Activist Writing.” Environmental Humanities 11 (1): 216-238.

Straube, Wibke and Luca Tainio. 2019. Book review of “The Power of Vulnerability: Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures.” Nora – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 27 (3): 210-212.

Gottzén, Lucas & Wibke Straube. 2016. “Trans masculinities”. Special Issue. NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 11 (4), Spring 2016.

Straube, Wibke. 2014. Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes. A Transfeminist Reading of Utopian Sensibility and Gender Dissidence in Contemporary Film. (Dissertation). Linköping: Linköping UP.

I currently co-supervise three PhD students.

1. Nico Miskow Friborg, PhD project: “Coalitional trans organising in Denmark. T4t methodologies, collective and mundane care and abolitionist politics", University of Stavanger, Norway, expected defense 2026.
   
2. Storm Möller Madsen, PhD project: "Turning towards each other. Trans-separatist sensibilities, communal becoming and trans survival in contemporary trans performance art", expected defense 2025, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 
3. Utu-Tuuli Jussila, PhD project: "Extra/ordinary – norms and utopias in the visual representations of non-binary genders", University of Helsinki, Finland, expected defense 2027.