Malin Ah-King

About Malin Ah-King

I work as a researcher and teacher in gender studies. I am an evolutionary biologist and gender researcher (Associate professor in Gender studies) within the field of feminist science studies. After my dissertation in Evolutionary Biology, I have worked with interdisciplinary gender research about biology in different ways – problematized notions of biological sexes as binary and stable, by showing that biological sex is dynamic, many organisms change sex, and how they develop their sex can depend on genetics, environmental as well as social factors. My research has also highlighted gender stereotypes and heteronormative conceptions in theory (evolutionary theory about sex) and research (for example research about animals’ so called sex roles), as well as in textbooks about biology. With analyses based in feminist theory I have explored how perceptions about females have changed in evolutionary biology. My current project investigates why evolutionary biologists disagree over what sex differences are and how this controversy has emerged.

Research

My current project, The Ontological Controversy over Sex Differences – a science study of evolutionary biology 1982-2018, is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. In public debates biology is often used to assert essential sex differences – yet, evolutionary biologists themselves disagree over sex differences and their causes. This project aims at understanding how and why this controversy over sex differences emerged, what the sources of disagreements are and how the different researchers’ understandings of sex differences were formed by their perspectives and experiences.

Another on-going research project investigates research at the intersection of feminism and biology through interviews with researchers in different disciplines (within biology and/or gender studies) at different places in the world. The project aims at exploring the researchers’ epistemological starting points and understandings of sex/gender, as well as their experiences of doing research at this intersection.

An earlier project, The ‘Female Turn’ in Evolutionary Biology – a science study of shifting canonical knowledge 1980-2000, explored how the international evolutionary research community shifted perceptions of females in evolutionary biology, away from “coy”, passive and monogamous, towards including that they often mate with multiple males, have active sexual strategies and can be both aggressive and dominant. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council and resulted in the book The Female Turn, How Evolutionary Science Shifted Perceptions About Females (Palgrave MacMillan 2022) and the article “The history of sexual selection research provides insights as to why females are still understudied” (Nature Communications 13, 6976 (2022)). The book was discussed in Science Magazine’s podcast about science, sex and gender, where Anne Fausto-Sterling chose books that in different ways show how science is a social process situated in specific cultures.

Previously I have, together with Sören Nylin at Stockholm University, explored the variation in sex and sexuality in different organisms and how these changed over time, as well as developed a theoretical framework for understanding the biological sex as dynamic and in relation to environmental factors.

The Agency for Higher Education and the National Secretariat for Gender Research commissioned me to write the book “Gender Perspectives on Biology” in Swedish, now used as course literature. The book has also been translated into German.

I have written a critical analysis of a highly acclaimed study of sex differences in toy preferences in vervet monkeys. Another analysis concerns biology textbooks and how they explain animal sexual behavior.

“Toxic sexes-perverting pollution and queering hormone disruption” is an analysis of media coverage of endocrine-disrupting pollutants that I wrote with Eva Hayward, University of Arizona.

In collaboration with Patricia Gowaty, UCLA, I have conducted an overview of variation in mate choice among animals, in relation to new theory of evolution.

I have collaborated with Andrew Barron and Marie Herberstein, Macquarie University, to examine current research on genital evolution. We showed that this research is still male biased, though the degree of bias depends on which hypothesis the researchers tested as well as which animal group was investigated.

Together with Ingrid Ahnesjö, Uppsala University, I examined and criticized how the term “sex roles” is used in research on animal behavior, and wrote an article in Tidskrift för genusvetenskap (the Swedish Journal of Gender Studies) about what we can learn from biological research on “sex roles”.

I was also involved in the project “A gender equal SLU [Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences]”.

I have always strived for my research to be relevant and accessible within both biology and gender studies, therefore I have published in both biological and gender studies journals, and shifted between gender studies and biological departments – the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Biology, Macquarie University, Australia and the division of gender research at Stockholm University. I have also held courses on gender/queer perspectives on biology at two universities in Germany, the Centre for gender and future studies, University of Marburg, and at the Department of history, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, as well as a PhD-course on Gender & Biological Sciences at Stockholm University.

Teaching

From January 2025, I am working as a lecturer in Gender Studies.

Interaction with society

I have presented my research at the Natural History Museums in Stockholm and Gothenburg, the Opera house in Stockholm, the The Maritime Museum and Aquarium in Gothenburg, Biotopia in Uppsala, Supreme Administrative Court, West Pride at the County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland, Women’s history museum in Umeå, Café Projektil in Uppsala, the Bookfair in Gothenburg, the Pride festival in Stockholm, Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the art- and science culture centre Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, Tranströmerbiblioteket in Stockholm and the high school Globala Gymnasiet in Stockholm.

I have written a paper for the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, "Det allt annat än passiva könet" [The everything but passive sex], recorded an audiotour about "Queer nature" for  Prinzessinnengarten Audiotour Berlin, participated in BBC Radio, Swedish Radio’s Radios Naturmorgon, Ligga med P3, Science News and Uppland’s Radio’s Animal News, as well as the Swedish Television’s Science News and childrens' program “The brain office”.

My research has been noticed in the journals Arbetaren, The Atlantic, New York Times, De Correspondent, Feministiskt Perspektiv, Uppsala Nya Tidning, Uppsala Fria Tidning, kulturnyheterna i SVT, Nature Blogg, National Geographic Blogg, “forskning.no” and Academia.net, and I have been interviewed by visual science storyteller Perrin Ireland (USA).