Prof. Dr. habil. Tatiana Zimenkova

Tatiana Zimenkova was born in 1977 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia).

She studied sociology at St. Petersburg State University and went on to earn her doctorate in sociology at the Institute of Science and Technology Research at the University of Bielefeld in 2006.

After completing her doctorate, she taught and researched at the University of Bielefeld, chiefly in the areas of political participation and community education. Her post-doctoral research (Habilitation) was entitled “Community production? A critical approach to the (re-)construction of the political in political education”, and was completed at the University of Bielefeld in 2016. While at the University of Bielefeld, she was also in the working group “Didactics of the Social Sciences”. From 2005 to 2012, she was the appointed representative of the German Director of the Centre for German and European Studies (ZDES) in Bielefeld, Germany / St. Petersburg, Russia.

From 2014 to 2018 she worked as an assistant professor in the Centre of Expertise for Teacher Training and Teaching and Education Research (DoKoLL) at the Technical University of Dortmund, where she taught diversity and differentiation in teaching methodologies and conducted empirical research into teaching and schools.

She has held the office of Vice-President for Internationalisation and Diversity at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences since 2019.

Her primary areas of research include relationship narratives; lines of division and othering processes; minority learners, refugee learners and empowerment; sexual identity and political participation; sexual citizenship; professionalisation theories, connections between identity, affiliation and profession research.

Current research:

  • Since 2021: The project “Child Sexual Abuse Crimes in Media Coverage – Providing Expertise for Sustainable Media Support of CSA Crimes Survivors” is a collaborative project between the NGO Stellit (Russia), Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the University of Tartu (Estonia), sponsored by the Council of Baltic States (CBSS) through the “Safe and Secure Region” funding line. This application-oriented project aims to identify and analyse myths surrounding the sexual abuse of children that continue to pervade the media, as well as to develop actionable recommendations on how to deconstruct these myths, especially among journalists and child protection specialists. The project thus contributes to advancing human and children’s rights as well as efforts to enshrine their safety and protection permanently in society. Project managers: Prof. Dr Tatiana Zimenkova and Prof. Dr Eva Maria Hinterhuber.
  • Since March 2015: Citizens in Uniform: Police Officers between Civic Participation, Professional Affiliation, and Gender Identity (together with Dr Verena Molitor, University of Bielefeld).
  • Since 2014: Joint project with the School of Diversity (http://www.schule-der-vielfalt.de/impressum.htm): Agency and Self-Perception of LGBTTIQ Learners in Educational Concepts, the Perceived Possibilities of Participation, and Learners’ Expectations for Educational Institutions;

Completed research projects:

  • 2018-2021: ZUNAMI, a project focusing on relationship narratives conducted within the framework of the funding line Zusammenhalt stärken in Zeiten von Krisen und Umbrüchen ("Strengthening cohesion in times of crises and upheavals") of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and its research programme Geistes-, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (“Humanities, Culture, and Social Sciences”), in cooperation with the University of Münster (consortium coordinator) as well as Auslandsgesellschaft NRW e.V. (Foreign Society NRW e.V.). https://zusammenhalt-dortmund.de/