Lou Witte

Lou Witte is studying Philosophy and Gender Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he is in his fifth major semester of his bachelor’s degree. He is organising a project tutorial on the metaphysical status of gender titled »Is There a Ready-Made Gender? Ontological and Epistemological Perspectives« in the summer semester 2018 and the winter semester 2018/19. Within the Feminist Philosophy Working Group, which he co-founded in summer 2017, Lou Witte also organises the lecture series »Issues in Feminist Philosophy«. His research interests include analytical feminist philosophy, in particular theoretical issues relating to metaphysics and epistemology.

In the priority area »Philosophy and the Cultural History of Perception«, Lou Witte is working with Jana Storch and Lennard Wolf on the gendering of voice assistant technologies, such as Siri and Alexa. The working title of their research is »Voice – Technology – Identity«. The relationship between the perception of self and others serves as his point of departure for an exploration of vocality and gender. Building on this joint research, Lou Witte also examines so-called gender fraud cases in the United Kingdom. His work addresses the potential that digital spaces open up for trans* people to express their identities and juxtaposes this with the risks that it poses, such as being portrayed as impostors.