Sarah Knaus

kraus

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

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 & Professional Background

  • MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies (2023-2024), University of Cambridge
  • Pediatric specialization 2017-2023, Vienna General Hospital
  • Medical Doctorate (2009-2015), Medical University of Vienna

Prizes and Grants

  • Science Prize of the Austrian Pediatric 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”