The Gates Cambridge Trust has announced the 95 outstanding scholars and future leaders who will form the 25th cohort of Gates Cambridge Scholars. We are delighted to announce that Dr Sarah Knaus, PhD in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies, has been awarded a Gates US International Scholarship for 2025-26 and we send our warmest congratulations to Sarah on this great achievement.
Dr Sarah Knaus
- Scholar-elect
- Austria, United States
- 2025 PhD Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies
I work as a pediatric endocrinology fellow at the Medical University of Vienna, where I specialize in providing care for children with differences in sex development and gender-diverse youth. Over the years, I came to appreciate how intricately my field is intertwined with larger sociopolitical and philosophical questions about normativity and bodily autonomy. I also became increasingly aware of the considerable responsibility we have in caring for marginalized young people. This led me to pursue an MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies at Cambridge, where I learned to apply critical theory to my own practice. My research has since focused on the interplay between gender diversity and health behaviors, and the limitations of medical scientific methodologies in understanding the nuance and agency of gendered embodiment. Expanding on this work, my PhD project aims to apply a more desire-based framework to transgender medical research, troubling the hierarchy between physician-researcher and subject-participant. I'm excited to join the Gates Cambridge scholarship community, whose commitment to improving the lives of others sits at the heart of what I do.
Previous Education
Medical University of Vienna Medicine
University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies