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Eliza Steinbock (E.A.)

Prof dr. Eliza Steinbock is Chair in Transgender Studies, Art and Cultural Activism based in the Literature and Art Department at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University. As chairholder, Eliza investigates inclusion and exclusion mechanisms operative in the art, culture, media, and heritage sectors and studies a range of practices that are aimed at changing inequalities. 

 

They are director of the Centre for Gender and Diversity (CGD), a platform that aims to connect researchers in the fields of gender and diversity studies, to facilitate networking with societal partners, and to enhance public-facing scholarship.​ 

 

Eliza is in the research program of Arts, Media and Culture (a board member), an affiliated researcher to the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage, and member of the Advisory Council to the Diversity and Inclusivity Office.

 

Eliza is project-leader of the national consortium “The Critical Visitor: Intersectional Approaches for Rethinking and Retooling Accessibility and Inclusivity in Heritage Spaces” (2020-2025) funded by the Dutch Research Council. Together with 15 partners, the research team of Eliza, Hester Dibbits, Dirk van den Heuvel, Noah Littel and Liang-kai Yu investigates how the organization, collection, and exhibition spaces of heritage can meet the breadth of demands placed by today’s “critical visitors” for queering, decolonizing, and cripping. See their open access edited volume in Dutch and English, The Critical Visitor: Changing Heritage Practices || De kritische bezoeker: erfgoedpraktijken in verandering (2023) (download it here). 

 

Eliza is PI for the Dutch team in the European consortium grant "Perverse Collections: Building Europe's Queer and Trans Archives" (JPI - Cultural Heritage 2023-2025), or PERCOL. They work together with Dr. Sandro Weilenmann (postdoc) and Layan Nijem, MA (research assistant). PERCOL is an international research collaboration between the universities of St. Andrews (Prof. Glyn Davis), Maastricht, and Murcia (Prof. Juan Antonio Suárez); it aims to map the growth of Europe’s queer and trans archives, from the 1970s to the present and to identify their political implications in the wider cultural heritage sector.

 

Eliza has published over 40 articles and book chapters on contemporary visual culture analyzing the intersecting dimensions of gender, sexuality, race, and ability. 

They authored the Society for Cinema and Media Studies awarded best first book, Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of Change (Duke, 2019) and is co-editor of Art and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis: Aesthetic Resilience (Routledge, 2020). Their most recent edited volume is the June 2021 TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly "Europa Issue" co-edited with Yv E. Nay. Together with Susan Stryker and Jian Neo Chen, Eliza co-edits the new Duke book series for critical trans studies, ASTERISK: Gender, Trans-, and All That Comes After.

Expertises

Driving my multidisciplinary research is the question of how local visual and material cultures can be marshaled to respond to global challenges of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms related to minoritarian identities, foremost to queer and trans identities. This focus has directed my investigations into the politics of cultural production and exhibition in the film, arts, and heritage sectors. The results have been disseminated in an award-winning monograph on trans cinema aesthetics, an edited volume with Routledge on artistic activism and resilience, five special issues in major journals for cultural studies, philosophy, and gender studies, and over 30 peer-reviewed essays.

 

I combine roles of scholar, curator, and consultant to cultural institutions, for example, producing a photography show “Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture” for the Alice Austen House on Staten Island funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (2021), being a member of the “Circle of Critical Friends” for the Schwules Museum in Berlin (on-going), and advising the National Museum for World Cultures on their “What a Genderful World” exhibition (2018-19).

 

I specialize in participatory research that involves stakeholders to comprehend as well as intervene in the meteoric rise in transgender imagery, discourses, and debate. Current discourses and legislation that claim transgender people “don’t exist” makes establishing trans heritage a pressing issue that I respond to directly through research collaborations with museums and archives.

 

My long-time interest in transgender studies is due to the way it potentially innovates any discipline by centralizing how bodies are generated through assemblage: of hard and soft technologies, discourses, desire. I research trans cultural production to understand how frameworks of visuality, embedded in specific visual mediums, shape the perception of bodily difference.

 

My research agenda is to affirm representations of trans embodiment while accounting for the difficulties of being seen as a legible person. I also identify as a non-binary trans person –some might say as genderqueer– and use the pronouns they/them/their. I describe my attitude towards my profession as “me-search” in the preface to my 2019 book Shimmering Images (Duke University Press).

Career history

Apr 2024 -        Full Professor 2 Chair in Transgender Studies, Art and Cultural Activism, Department of Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Maastricht University (1,0 fte)

July 2023-2024  Associate Professor 1 Gender and Diversity Studies, Department of Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Maastricht University (1,0 fte)

Sep 2021-2023  Associate Professor 2 Gender and Diversity Studies, Department of Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Maastricht University (1,0 fte)

2018 – 2021      Assistant Professor 1 Cultural Analysis, Centre for the Arts in Society, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University (1.0 fte)

2014 –2018       Postdoctoral Researcher with NWO Veni funding, Centre for the Arts in Society, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University (0.8 fte)

2014 –2018       Assistant Professor 2 Film and Literary Studies, Centre for the Arts in Society, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University (0.2 fte)         

2012 –2014       Lecturer Literature, Arts, Media/Cultural Studies, Department of Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University (0.6-1.0 fte) 

2010 –2012       Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities, Amsterdam University College (0.7 fte)

2008 –2009       Lecturer, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam (0.2 fte)

2006 –2011       AiO with funded PhD position, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam (0.7 fte)

EDUCATION

2011    PhD in Cultural Analysis (awarded best ASCA dissertation-annual cash prize) | Dept. Media Studies and Literary Studies, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, NL: awarded 17 June 2011. Supervisor: Prof. dr. Maaike Bleeker

2004    Master in Cultural Studies (with distinction-highest possible honor) | School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK: awarded 1 September 2004.

Other Professional Activities (Current)

2022 – present: Director of the Centre for Gender and Diversity, research unit in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University.

2023 – 2026: Member of the Appointment Advisory Committee (benoemingsadviescommissie UD en UHD / BAC) 

2021 – present: Maastricht University Diversity & Inclusivity Advisory Council, chaired by University President.

2021 – present: Board Research Program Arts, Media and Culture, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University.

2021 – 2024: Educational Program Committee for Masters Arts and Culture specialization Art and Heritage.

2021 – present: Course Coordinator and Team Member Masters Arts and Culture specialization Contemporary Literature and Art: Cultural Interventions and Social Justice.

Editorial Board of Journal

2023 – 2026 Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

2021 – present Culture Caleidoscoop 

2020 – present TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 

2016 – present Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affective Inquiry.

Book Series Editor  

2019 – present: ASTERISK: Gender, Trans-, and All That Comes After (Duke University Press with Susan Stryker and Jian Neo Chen)

SUPERVISION OF POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

  1. Supervisor, Dr. Sandro Weilenmann, “Artistic Participation in Queer and Trans (Counter)Archives.” Funded by JPI- CH, Perverse Collections Project, Department of Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University (September 2023 – August 2025)
  2. Co-supervisor, Dr. Cyd Sturgess, “Trans/Missions: The Politics of Identity and Precarity in Transgender Film Festivals in Sheffield, Amsterdam, and Berlin,” from The University of Sheffield to be based at Utrecht University (With Dr. Marijke de Valck, Funding Leverhulme Study Abroad Scholarship February 2022 - December 2022)

SUPERVISION OF PHD CANDIDATES

  1. Promoter/Daily Supervisor, Pieter du Plessis, “Belonging and Unbelonging in Amsterdam’s Het Zuid-Afrikahuis: A Decolonial Study of Dutch Whiteness in Relation to Afrikaner Whiteness,” Maastricht University (With Dr. Sophie Withaeckx and Prof dr. Margriet van der Waal, Funded by NWO PhDs in the Humanities, 2023-2027)
  2. [Co-Supervisor] Advisor for Minor Field of Trans Studies, Raphaëlle Bessette-Viens, “Crafting: Experimental Filmmaking and the Objects of Trans* Embodiment,” Concordia University (With Dr. Arseli Dokumacı and Dr. Matt Soar, Funded by Concordia)
  3. Co-Promoter/First co-supervisor, Valentina Curandi, “Last Will and Testament: Handling Materialities in Wishes Disposition for the Afterlife of Artistic Practice,” Maastricht University (With Dr. Christoph Raush and Dr. Ulrike Scholtes, Funded by MERIAN PhD in the Arts scholarship, 2023-2028)
  4. Co-promoter, Sinin Nakhle, “Translating Bodies of Protest: Contestation, Art, and Media in Contemporary Beirut,” University of Amsterdam (With Prof. dr. Thomas Poell, 2022-2026, Funded by NWO-PhDs in the Humanities)
  5. Supervisory committee member, Tessel Veneboer, “The Queer Potential of Fragmentation: Sexuality and Identity in Kathy Acker’s Work,” Ghent University, Belgium (With Supervisor Prof. dr. Gert Buelens, and Supervisory Committee members Dr. Paul Preciado and Dr. Anneleen Masschelein, Funding from FWO 2020-2024)
  6. Co-promoter 1, Thato Magano, “Sodom’s Golden Age: Sodomitical Discourses in Seventeenth Century Dutch Empire,“ Leiden University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (With Prof. dr. Wim van Anrooij and Prof. dr. Andrew Parker, Funding from Rutgers for a Cotutelle degree Sep. 2020-2023)
  7. Promoter/Daily supervisor, Noah Littel, “Founding an Inclusive Space: Legacies of Alternative Archiving Practices in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom” Maastricht University (With Prof. dr. Monika Baár and Prof. dr. Hester Dibbits, Funding from NWO Feb. 2020-2025)
  8. Promoter/Daily supervisor, Liang-kai Yu, “Queering the Museum: Contemporary Artists and Curators as ‘Critical Visitors’ and Their Creative Intervention into Dutch, British, and German Cultural Institutions,” Maastricht University (With Dr. Vivian van Saaze and Dr. Dirk van den Heuvel, from 2019 with NWO funding from Feb. 2020-2025)