Maria Weickardt Soares, M.A.

© Martin Plewa

Doctoral Research Associate

Name

Maria Weickardt Soares M.A.

in the research project FRAMENET

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Address work

Visiting address:

ABS Haus 116, Ebene 03 August-Bebel-Straße 30

01219 Dresden

Maria Weickardt Soares is a research associate and PhD Candidate at the Chair of International Politics at the Institute of Political Science at TU Dresden. In the trinational research project 'Framenet'', she focuses on current and historical discourses and networks in global health. Before joining TU Dresden, she already worked for the research group 'Global Humanitarian Medicine' at the Social Science Research Center Berlin, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, the University of Liverpool and the Goethe Institute Brazil.

Maria Weickardt Soares holds an M.A. in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin and a B.A. in Political Science as well as Media and Communication Studies from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). During her studies, she spent a semester abroad in Hyderabad, India. She also lived in Brazil for two years, where she worked primarily as a tutor and academic lecturer for German, English, and Brazilian Portuguese. She is a member of the Global Health Hub Germany and is involved in public health policy in Brazil.

Her research interests include international institutions, clashes of norms, health inequality discourses and theories, North-South disparities in global health, and critical, poststructuralist, and discourse analytic approaches to inter- and transnational politics.
 

Publications

Weickardt Soares, Maria/Holzscheiter, Anna/Henrichsen, Tim (2025): Biobanking as a contentious issue in global health governance diversification and contestation of policy frames in international biobanking debates, Social Science & Medicine, 369. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117773. 

Holzscheiter, Anna/Weickardt Soares, Maria (2024): International rules on health data sharing for a new pandemic agreement (Policy Brief 23/2024). Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). DOI: 10.23661/ipb23.2024. 

Weickardt Soares, Maria (2024): The right to health in times of crisis: ‘Necropolitics’ in Brazil’s favelas during the Covid-19 pandemic, Runner-up Annual Writing Competition, March 2024. 

Hellmer, Julia/Weickardt Soares, Maria/Galesne, Claire (2019): “Expertise Macht Politik”, WZB Mitteilungen 166, Schwerpunktheft “Haben, Nehmen, Lassen”, https://bibliothek.wzb.eu/artikel/2019/f-22614.pdf.

Contribution to Issues of Global Social Policy:

Global Social Policy Digest 25.1 (2025): Migration, refugees, and forced displacement as issues of global social policy. Global Social Policy, 0 (0). DOI: 10.1177/14680181241309174.

Global Social Policy Digest 24.3 (2024): Adopting a gender lens to tackle gender disparities. Global Social Policy, 24 (3), 507-533. DOI:  10.1177/14680181241274952.

Global Social Policy Digest 24.2 (2024): Recalibrating investment at the global level. Global Social Policy, 24 (2), 336-362. DOI: 10.1177/14680181241261477.

Exhibitions

„Kindersoldat*in: Opfer oder Täter*in?“, Online-Ausstellung zur medialen Perzeption von Kindersoldat:innen, Berlin (Germany), 05/2019 (mit Cornelia Hinderks, Saskia Kunert, Laura Meijer, Jana Noelke).

Conferences

British International Studies Association Conference 2024, Birmingham, UK, paper presented: Gatekeeping global health in times of crisis: a discourse network analysis of marginalisation in digital health.

International Studies Association Annual Conference 2023, San Francisco, paper presented:

• Dismantling and Explaining Exclusion in International Debates on Health Data Sharing: A Discourse Network Analysis (together with Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter);
• Exclusion through Expertise? An Approach to Analysing the Nexus between Power, Injustice, and Knowledge Production in the World Health Organization.

ECPR Annual Conference 2023, Sep 2023, Potsdam, Germany – Discussant for The political economy of welfare states in low and middle-income countries: the Global South (Section: The Political Economy of Twenty-First Century Welfare Capitalism) – Papers presented:

• International organisations as gatekeepers of epistemic (in)justice? A Critical Policy Discourse Analysis on health data inequality within the World Health Organization (PhD project);
• Inequalities in socially excluded areas – A frame analysis of Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 politics in Brazilian favelas;
• Debating Health Data Norms in Times of Institutional Fragmentation – A Discourse Network Analysis of Norm Contestation within Global Health Organisations (together with Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter).

EISA-PEC Annual Conference 2023, Sep 2023, Prague, Czech Republic – Presented Paper: Regime Complexity and the Politicization of Global Health – A Discourse Network Analysis of Contentious Debates on Health Data Sharing within International Organizations (together with Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter).

Kulmbach Workshop 2023, Aug/Sep 2023, Kulmbach, Germany – Presented paper: Who Governs Human Biobanks in Global Health? Frame dynamics, advocacy coalitions and norm collisions in international debates on the transnational dimensions of biobanking (together with Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter).

Oxford Global Health and Bioethics International Conference, June 2023, Oxford, UK – Oral Presentation.

International Studies Association Annual Conference 2023, Montreal, panelist for "Methods, Measures, and Data in the Study of International Organizations" and presentation of the paper "Discourse Networks in Health Data and Biobanking Governance: Explaining Policies on the Global Circulation of Human Specimens and Data" (together with  Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter).

6th International Academic Conference on Research in Social Sciences 2023, Oxford, presentation about the dissertation: "International organisations as gatekeepers of epistemic (in)justice? A Critical Policy Discourse Analysis on health data inequality within the World Health Organisation".

APSA Annual Convention 2022, Panelist for "Tracing Actor and Frame Interdependence in Global Policy Networks"  and presentation of the paper: "Human bodies unleashed – Evolving debates on the global circulation of human specimens and health data".

Plenary Lectures/Workshops

Global Health Spring School (March 2024), workshop on "Ethics in global health and the decolonial health project”.

Dresdner Seniorenakademie (23.02.2023), lecture on "The international health system - lessons from the pandemic".

Global Health Summer School (16 to 23.07.2022), workshop on "Digitalisation and data - necessity, empowerment or surveillance".

Lectures