Dr. Matthias Schneider (he/him) is a sociologist with research interests in gender studies, critical masculinity studies, and diversity studies. His work focuses particularly on internationalization, tertiary education, displacement, organizations, and law.

He studied sociology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Otto Friedrich University Bamberg and spent semesters abroad at the University of Copenhagen. His PhD at Goethe University Frankfurt explored gender constructions in the biographies of refugee men from Eritrea. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Helma Lutz and Prof. Dr. Susanne Spindler, his dissertation was funded by a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. During this time, he also worked as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf.

As a postdoctoral researcher, he was part of the DFG research group "Law – Gender – Collectivity" at the University of Potsdam, working under the chair of organizational sociology held by Prof. Dr. Maja Apelt. His research focused on gender equality in consumer organizations. Currently, he is affiliated with the Einstein Professorship "Sociology with a Focus on Gender Studies" held by Prof. Dr. Kathrin Zippel, where he examines issues of internationalization, return migration, and diversity.

I am currently working on several research projects on gender, diversity, and organizations.

Diversity Scripts in Higher Education

Diversity Scripts examines how universities institutionalize diversity, how categories of difference stabilize or erode, and how these processes are shaped by internal and external dynamics. While diversity has become a global reference point in higher education, its institutionalization often remains fragile, symbolic, and uneven across categories and national contexts.

The project analyzes the conditions under which categories such as gender, race, disability, or religion become organizationally embedded, transformed, or delegitimized. It combines institutional theory and institutional work with research on diversity work and organizational perspectives on universities as loosely coupled expert organizations. A central focus lies on the institutionalization and deinstitutionalization of diversity categories and on conflicts over meritocracy and feminist hiring practices within neoliberal performance regimes.

Professors in Motion: Academic Mobility, Return Migration, and the Role of Gender and Diversity in Transatlantic Career Trajectories

This project studies the transatlantic mobility of professors between Germany and the United States and asks how academic careers are shaped by gender, diversity, and institutional frameworks. Building on more than 100 interviews from 2008, a second wave of interviews traces how experiences, strategies, and structural conditions of international mobility have changed over time.

Key themes include meritocracy, support structures, national legal contexts, and organizational selection logics, as well as geopolitical shifts that reshape mobility regimes. Mobility is understood as a relational practice within a transnational field marked by unequal distributions of recognition, risk, and exclusion.

Discrimination, Emotions, and Consumer Behavior (DEVGAV)

DEVGAV investigates how discrimination is experienced in everyday market contexts, which emotions are involved, and how these experiences shape consumer behavior. Markets are approached as socially structured fields in which inequalities along categories such as gender, ethnicity, social background, or disability become consequential in everyday decisions, avoidance strategies, or forms of resistance.

The project combines foundational research with expert interviews in consumer organizations and the participatory development of practice-oriented tools. Findings are discussed with actors in consumer protection and anti-discrimination work to support their integration into organizational routines. Dissemination includes a scientific conference and open access publications.

Standardized Diversity: How Technical Standards (Re)Produce Diversity and Difference

This project analyzes technical standards as powerful infrastructures that stabilize societal assumptions of normality by classifying bodies, subjects, and practices. It examines how differences such as gender, sexuality, age, disability, race, and nationality are explicitly addressed, implicitly assumed, or rendered invisible in standardization documents, and which subject positions and body norms are thereby produced.

Theoretically, the project links feminist technology studies and critical STS with organizational perspectives on standards as partial organizations, complemented by an intersectional approach. Methodologically, it combines a mapping of the standards landscape with an in-depth qualitative analysis of a theoretically sampled corpus using MAXQDA. Results inform academic publications, a conference, and guidelines for gender- and diversity-sensitive teaching on standards, and provide a basis for further research on standard-setting processes and large-scale analyses of standards corpora.

Edited Volumes

Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Hrsg.). (2025). Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames. Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84743101

Scheibelhofer, P. & Schneider, M. (2021). Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung. Special Issue Männlichkeit und Flucht, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5771/2509-9485-2021-1

Monographs

Schneider, M. (2023). Männlichkeit und Flucht: Biographische Perspektiven auf die Lebensgeschichten aus Eritrea geflüchteter Männer. Gesellschaft und Geschlecht: Bd. 79. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41767-3

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Schneider, M. (2025). Zwischen Kochtopf und Gleichstellung: Geschlechterwissen in Verbraucher:innenorganisationen. Open Gender Journal, 9. https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2025.346

Schneider, M. (2025). Die übersehene Verletzbarkeit? Erfahrungen geflüchteter Männer zwischen Leid, Solidarität und Gewalt. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2025-2003

Schneider, M. (2021). Marginalisiert Flucht Männlichkeit? Lebensgeschichtliche (Re-)Konstruktionen von Männlichkeit im Kontext der Flucht aus Eritrea. Zeitschrift für Flüchtlingsforschung, 5(1), 77–108. https://doi.org/10.5771/2509-9485-2021-1-77

Book Chapters in Peer-Reviewed Publications

Hark, S., Schneider, M. & Wielowiejski, P. (2025). Wie für ein neues Gemeinsames gekämpft wird: Einleitendes zu den Fallstudien. In Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Hrsg.), Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames (S. 15–17). Budrich.https://doi.org/10.3224/84743101.02

Schneider, M. & Löckmann, T. (2025). Kämpfen Menstruierende und Verbraucher*innen gemeinsam? Eine Analyse des umkämpften Allgemeinen und neuen Gemeinsamen von Menstruationsbewegung und Verbraucherzentralen. In Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Hrsg.), Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames (S. 113–134). Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84743101.07 

Schneider, M. (2025). Vom Scheitern an Rechtstexten und Weiterdenken in sozialen Prozessen: Eine qualitativ-soziologische Adaption des ReWritings am Beispiel des diversitätssensiblen Verbraucher*innenschutzes. In Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Hrsg.), Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames. (S. 265–280). Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84743101.16

Scheibelhofer, P. & Schneider, M. (2021). Männlichkeit und Flucht zusammendenken: Eine Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung, 5(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.5771/2509-9485-2021-1-3

Schneider, M. & Stuber, L. (2019). Was machen Asylgesetze mit Männlichkeit? Hegemoniale Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Spannungsverhältnis. In S. Berghahn & U. Schultz (Hrsg.), Rechtshandbuch für Frauen und Gleichstellungsbeauftragte (Loseblatt, Stand Februar 2019). Dashöfer.

Blogs, Reports, Transcribed Roundtable Discussions

Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (2025). Kollektiv forschen revisited. Transdisziplinäres Arbeiten zu Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität. Ein Rundgespräch. In Forschungsgruppe „Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität“ (Hrsg.), Recht umkämpft. Feministische Perspektiven auf ein neues Gemeinsames (S. 308–332). Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84743101.19

Schneider, M. (2023). Eine neue Perspektive auf Flucht und Männlichkeit. Blog Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung. https://www.gender-blog.de/beitrag/flucht-maennlichkeit, https://doi.org/10.17185-/gender/20231010

Schneider, M. & Löckmann, T. (2022). Geschlechtergerechtigkeit im Verbraucher*innenschutz? Genderblog der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. https://genderblog.hu-berlin.de/geschlechtergerechtigkeit-im-verbraucher_innenschutz/

Stöver, H., Mittel, K., Schneider, M., Grundmann, J., Kuhn, S. & Zurhold, H. (2018). Geflüchtete Menschen und Drogen-/Abhängigkeitsproblematik: Expertise im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Gesundheit. Institut für Suchtforschung. Verfügbar unter Researchgate