Irene Dölling

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Irene Dölling (also known as Irene Mayer-Dölling) was born on 23 December 1942 in Leicester, England. She is a German sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Women's Studies. She retired from Potsdam University in 2008 and serves on the advisory board of the feminist journal Signs. A colleague described her retirement as a time when she showed “creative obstinacy.”

Dölling’s parents were ethnic Germans and Communists who fled Nazi Germany, moving first to Britain in 1939. After World War II, the family settled in the Soviet-occupied zone that became East Germany. She grew up in East Germany.

She studied at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1961 to 1966, focusing on library science and philosophy. She earned her PhD in 1970 and completed her Habilitation in 1976. Her work began to focus on gender relations and the position of women in East German society, noting how state childcare and high female workforce participation affected women’s lives.

In 1989, together with Hildegard Maria Nickel, she co-founded the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University and became its first Research Director in 1990. In 1994 she moved to Potsdam as Professor of Women's Studies, where she taught until her retirement in 2008. She continued to publish research and served on several scientific advisory boards.