Madeleine Pape is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sports Science, University of Lausanne. From 2023-2026, she will be an Ambizione scholar of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Madeleine is also an inclusion specialist for the International Olympic Committee. She has contributed her double position as an elite athlete (competing at the top international level of track-and-field) and sociologist to public and policy discussions about the regulation of eligibility in elite women’s sport, writing and speaking in a wide range of media outlets. A sociologist by training (MS and PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Madeleine’s work is at the intersection of sociology of gender and feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS). Her work has examined the epistemic politics surrounding gender equity and inclusion in sport and biomedicine, focusing in particular on the role of policymakers as epistemic actors who contribute to the production of ‘sex’ as a biological, binary entity. By analyzing the efforts of policymakers, scientists, and (some) feminist groups to institutionalize certain notions of sex and gender, Madeleine’s work shows how ‘sex’ is invariably an elusive, ambiguous, and dynamic entity that is always already entangled with race, nation, and other ideologies and structures of difference and inequality. Madeleine has published in some of the leading journals of her field including Gender & Society, Body & Society, Social Studies of Science, Health Sociology Review, Big Data & Society, and Sociology of Sport Journal.
