Ulrike Klöppel holds a diploma in psychology from the Freie Universität Berlin. In her doctoral thesis, she reconstructed the history of the medicalization of intersex people in Germany from 18th century until present days, focusing on the discursive and material production of gender as a binary category. The thesis, submitted in 2008 at the Universität Potsdam, Department of Sociology, has been published by transcript in 2010 with the title XX0XY ungelöst. Hermaphroditismus, Sex und Gender in der deutschen Medizin. From 2006 to 2011, Klöppel worked on research projects about drug history and the history of psychiatry at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité– Universitätsmedizin Berlin. From 2011 to 2013, with the support of a postdoctoral scholarship from the graduate research program 'Gender as a Category of Knowledge' at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, she studied the history of interactions of transgender people with socialist authorities and medical doctors in the GDR. Following from her interest in the history of the AIDS movement in Germany, Klöppel became part of a non-academic group called Aids-Geschichte ins Museum! (AKAIM), which works to preserve testimonials on AIDS activism and self-help. Since 2015, she has also conducted research on this topic, sustained by different positions as research associate at the Institute for European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
