I am such a reactionary

[e_pepys]

This job advert is a mystery to me. Post 1 concernsGender and physics. The interface between gender research and physics has mostly been restricted to understand “women in science”; conditions, power-relations, mechanisms of exclusion and the like. We encourage applicants to focus on questions about gendered knowledge and materiality.
They want

Comments

[emily_shore]

I consider myself to be pretty up on gender studies, but I have no idea what that means...

[uitlander]

I think gendered knowledge means the differences in how males and females digest and transfer information. Whoops, I shouldn't have said 'males and females' for gender is a social construct, so there can be many more than two genders. I'll just go and shoot myself now.

As for 'materiality' - I'm afraid my degree in arch and anth from the most pretentious dept. in the UK didn't plumb that depth, but you might offer them a Marxist post-structural approach as an alternative. Personally I'd guess that materiality means 'things' but heaven alone knows what that means in the context.

[zengineer]

I'm not actually sure but materiality may well be an horrific neologism for how important something is to the topic in question (as in a material witness). So my best guess is that what they are after is a proposal on how the difference in the way men and women process information and organise cooperation affects how physics projects progess and how ideas move into the mainstream.

[purpletigron]

Not to condemn uitlander, but I do think it's useful that 'gender' and 'sex' (and 'sexual intercourse') are three distinct terms :-) So they should be asking on different ways that people approach science, and whether that correlates with other indicators of social gender, phenotype, genotype ...

[thenoseygit]

Perhaps materiality is a really esoteric way of expressing the idea of the influences of the biological "sex" of a person, as opposed to the "gender" construct that may or may not affect how they perceive themselves and the world around themselves.

Possibly, they may be investigating the effects of both of investigating the the effects of how knowledge of your own gender ("I'm a girl, I must feel like this, blah blah blah, I see myself as a girl because of this, wah wah wah") contrasts with the biological reality of actually being a girl, with the various differences in cortical regions and so forth - and how that interfaces with the study or exploration of physics.

That would actually be a fascinating idea to consider, come to think of it!