LENA HOLZER
Researcher. Intersectional queer-feminist. Teacher
In her work as an Assistant Professor of Gender, Race and the Law at the University of Cambridge, Lena Holzer is fascinated by the role gender and race play in our lives and legal identity. Her areas of interest are queer-feminist and anti-racist research methods, which she uses to examine international law, human rights law, and sports law. She currently works on her first monograph, analysing how international law has played a role in making binary gender categories part of people's individual legal identity. In another project, she examines social, gender and race inequalities in the field of sports. She is specifically interested in the power of sports law and international sports federations in normalising certain body norms and social roles across the globe. She has a PhD in International Law with a minor in International Relations from the Geneva Graduate Institute and a European Master's Degree is in Human Rights and Democratisation.
Lena Holzer / © Girton College
“As a university lecturer, I am passionate about researching social justice and teaching the next generation of lawyers. In a world facing multiple crises, I see it as my job to foster critical thinking and equip students with tools to challenge power inequalities.”
© Université de Genève - photographe mandaté: I. P. Matthieu
I have always been drawn to working in fields related to social justice, but finding myself as part of a Law Faculty at Cambridge was something I did not anticipate. I studied International Development as my bachelor’s at the University of Vienna, as I was concerned about global inequalities in wealth and resource distribution. During my bachelor degree, I did an Erasmus exchange semester and internship in Geneva, which exposed me to the world of human rights and international law. I ended up doing my Masters and PhD in this area, which brought me to feminist, queer and anti-racist legal studies - my current field of research and teaching.
In recent years, my research has focused on the rights of transgender and intersex persons, approached through an intersectional feminist lens. A core question guiding my work is how law recognizes — or fails to recognize — non-binary individuals, and why legal systems insist on categorizing everyone into binary gender markers.
I am deeply convinced that rigid gender norms harm everyone, including cisgender, straight men, although it remains clear that gender norms are especially oppressive to women and LGBTIQ+ persons. I thus believe that we need to counter gender norms from various angles, including also critical masculinity studies. My personal research journey has also involved unlearning certain feminist assumptions rooted in the experiences of white, privileged women.
Today, I am increasingly concerned about the political backlash threatening hard-won rights for LGBTI persons and women. We are witnessing an era where access to abortion, legal gender recognition, and open queer expression are being systematically restricted. In response, I continue to explore what feminist, queer and anti-racist legal theory can teach us about imagining a legal framework that creates space for everyone.
“Feminism must be intersectional and queer. Even if at times hard work, feminist research ethics means to practice self-reflection to understand my own biases and prejudice. This, I think, is the first step to embrace difference and make a difference.”
