Carla LaGata/Carsten Balzer

Balzer, who holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin, wrote hir Ph.D. thesis on gender-variant/trans communities in  Brazil, Germany and the United States. S_he has carried  out fieldwork in tanzania and the Brazilian Amazon  region, as well as in Rio de Janeiro, New York City and  Berlin; taught Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin; and has published a book and various chapters in anthologies and articles in peer-reviewed journals in the U.S., Brazil,  Germany, Spain and the UK. S_he is chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Board of the transgender network Berlin (tGnB), founding member of the online journal Liminalis – Journal for Sex/Gender Emancipation and Resistance,  Editorial Board member of the academic journal Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ), and member of the Advisory Committee of the Open Society Foundations’ LGBti rights initiative. S_he supported tGEu from its very beginnings in 2005 and served as a Transgender Europe (tGEu) Steering Committee member from 2008 to 2012. Currently, s_he is the lead researcher of tGEu’s Transrespect versus Transphobia research project, which s_he initiated in 2009, and resulted in the publication of the 2012 report Transrespect versus Transphobia WorldWide: a comparative review of the human-rights situation of Gender-variant/Trans people.