Gender Studies has developed as an academic discipline in the last few decades, on the ground of Women’s Studies. As a rule, gender studies is an interdisciplinary field of research involving knowledge of philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, anthropology, sociology, political sciences, cultural studies, literary theory, linguistic and media studies. The basic research topics are the roots of gender knowledge and gender differences. It involves questioning and reviewing certain “mainstream” and “malestream” theories and theorisations of gender in social and humanistic academic production but also a review of some early feminist approaches to gender. Gender studies have generated new concepts and approaches that problematize the sex/gender binary and move in the direction of disseminating and deepening critical epistemological knowledge in this field. In this respect, the methodology and epistemology of gender studies are of crucial importance, as well as gender determination in all key phases of the research procedure, from the selection of the problem and method, information and data collection to interpretation and presentation of empirical and theoretical findings.
The PhD Program in Gender Studies provides a framework for learning about the main theoretical, epistemological, and methodological approaches to gender that have been developed on the basis of critical analysis of malestream theoretical perspectives and epistemology. Special attention is paid to the gender dimension of modern globalization processes, intercultural comparisons and interculturality, politics of emotions, the relationship between (new) technologies and gender, the cultural representations of gender, and analysis of attempts to transform social and political institutions based on gender-specific power relations. Students may choose a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and different topics that address the organization, meanings and experiences of gender in different historical, socio-political and cultural contexts in their research.