Sarah Knaus
Exploring gendered embodiment in transgender and gender-diverse adolescents at the intersection of exercise and eating behaviours, social inclusion, and mental health: Towards a desire-centred approach in paediatric gender-affirming healthcare and research
Supervisor:
Dr Andres Roman-Urrestarazu, University of Cambridge, Gillings Fellow in Autism Research and Global Public Health at Autism Research Centre
Abstract
I work as a paediatric 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. My research focuses on the interplay between gender diversity and health behaviours, and the limitations of medical scientific methodologies in understanding the nuance and agency of gendered embodiment.
My PhD project aims to challenge existing damage-centred scientific paradigms surrounding eating and exercise behaviours in gender-diverse youth. While this study cites the clinical intervention as method, I intend to show how utilizing qualitative methodologies in conversation with transgender studies and decolonial theory can enable the application of a more desire-based framework to transgender medical research. The idea is to create a blueprint for how a desire-centred, decolonial approach to research could function in a clinical setting by purposefully embracing joyfulness, heterogeneity, and shifting power dynamics in knowledge production. Crucially, the project is also guided by a commitment to foregrounding trans voices and improving the lives of gender minorities in concrete, material ways.
Academic and Professional Background:
MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies (2023-2024), University of Cambridge
Paediatric specialization 2017-2023, Vienna General Hospital
Medical Doctorate (2009-2015), Medical University of Vienna
Prizes and Grants:
Science Prize of the Austrian Paediatric Society (2025)
Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Class of 2025
Bell Scholar Award (2023/24) for the best MPhil dissertation at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies
CCP Starter Grant (2021) for the project “Transition to adult care in paediatric endocrinology”