Break Up Your Academic Boys Club

Male Monocultures, Male Fantasies and Critical Masculinities

Keynote address given by Christoph May at the Quantum Frontiers Days 2026
Leibniz University Hannover @uni_hannover

Participants: 250 Professors, PostDocs and Doctoral Students
April 28, 2026 at Congresscentrum Wienecke

Organized by Janna-Lee Steenblock
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Management
Cluster of Excellence QuantumFrontiers

„Hi Christoph,

I’m […] and I’m doing a postdoct at […]. I was attending your talk today, I’m very sorry I didn’t have time to talk to you in person afterwards but I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am for the talk you did today.

It was so important for once to have a good and deep talk about this subject, I attended some talks like this but it always made me very angry because they never talk about the real problems, and you really did! So please, if you can, continue doing this type of meetings I think this is so important for people especially in science to attend this. In general, but more often at work of course, I feel like I’m the only one talking about this, I’m always doing these monologues to my (almost all male) colleagues who look at me like I’m just a crazy angry feminist girl, and maybe I am but I don’t care actually because without people standing up for what is right nothing will change. So thanks a lot, I hope more men can talk about this because sadly I feel like men talking and educating men is the only solution before men finally listen, include and respect women. And I think actually it was the first time in my life (except in podcasts ok) I was hearing a man talking about this for more than 15 minutes, so this was so refreshing and relieving. […]

Have a nice evening, […]“