Hidden figures? The role of women in early interpretive research in the United States and the German Empire

Ursula Offenberger and Marion Keller

Chapter 2 in Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 22-36 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Taking a transatlantic perspective, the chapter looks at first-generation female social scientists in Germany and the United States. Although well known and respected by their contemporary academic colleagues, their contribution to the development of interpretive social science was neglected and subsequently forgotten. Through the examples of the Hull House collective of female researchers in the United States and early German social scientists Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne and Gertrud Dyhrenfurth, we highlight different institutional conditions that enabled, encouraged, and hindered women's participation in the social sciences at the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter sheds light on the methodological innovations as well as the thematic agenda setting of these female researchers, while also reflecting on the roles gender, class, and race played in their research. In the conclusion we examine the disciplinary practices of scholars who have defined the field, and survey groundbreaking research that reinvents and reclaims the history of academic disciplines.

Keywords: Chicago Hull House; Settlement sociology; Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne; Gertrud Dyhrenfurth; Empirical methods; Social movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926384
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