Luisa Grabiger

2012	Abitur (roughly equivalent to A-levels) at Goethe-Gymnasium Stralsund
2012-2019	Studies of English and German to become a teacher (Lehramt Gymnasium) at the University of Greifswald (1st State Examination)
2014	Exchange semester at the University of Aberdeen
2016	Exchange semester at Lancaster University
since 2019	Graduate assistant (Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft) in English linguistics and PhD student

Research interests: Sociolinguistics, media discourse analysis, digital ethnography, gender and sexuality studies
I am a research assistant for students preparing for their oral project presentations (teacher training: Linguistics II+III; BA Linguistics II; MA Sprachliche Vielfalt: Angl 1+2). Please send me an email if you need any assistance with your projects! I will be happy to answer questions and support you with your research.
PhD dissertation project: Online Identity Construction of Trans Beauty Vloggers – a Multimodal Linguistic Analysis of Queer Discourse on YouTube (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Theresa Heyd).
My research focus lies on queer discourses produced by trans beauty influencers on YouTube. The platform has gained notable relevance not only for a multi-million dollar beauty industry which signs influencers, but also in its original intention to offer people a medium for expressing ideas. I attempt to investigate how individual and collective (gender) identities are indexed with a specific focus on the significance this has for language negotiations and interactions among the community. My thesis combines digital ethnography and multimodal discourse analysis to explore affordances of audiovisual communication and linguistic resources vloggers draw upon. The aim of my research is to develop better understandings of a gender-variant community. Following current debates on gender inclusivity, the topic seems all the more meaningful for sociolinguistic studies.

Online Identity Construction of Trans* Beauty Vloggers – a Multimodal Linguistic Analysis of Queer Discourse on YouTube. Gender im Fokus, Forschungskolloquium, Greifswald. November 2019
YouTube and Ethics. BAAL Language and New Media, Edinburgh. März 2020
Indexing Gender on YouTube: a multimodal analysis of stance-taking by NikkiTutorials. The 2nd International Conference on Internet Pragmatics, Helsinki. October 2020
"I believe in the power of transformation": coming-out stories of non-binary identities in beauty vlogs on YouTube. 7th Young Linguists' Meeting. Rethinking language and identity in the multilingual world, Poznań. April 2021
Sustainable periods and "not voting for the Tories": multi-authored stance-taking in YouTube period product reviews. (Presentation with Dr. Susan Reichelt). IPrA, Winterthur. June 2021

Graduate assistant and PhD student