Carla LaGata (196? - ) anthropologist, activist

Carsten Balzer, whose female persona is Carla Lagata, has been active in social movements since the mid-1980s, holds a MA and PhD from the Free University of Berlin, has done fieldwork in Tanzania, the Brazilian Amazon region, Rio de Janeiro, New York City and Berlin and has taught Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin.

S_he has published on the differences between drag queens and Tunten, and the differences between the trans subcultures in Rio, New York and Berlin paying attention to the interaction between the international/US concept of drag queen and autochthonous local traditions.

S_he is chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Board of the transgender network Berlin (TGNB), founding member of the online journal Liminalis – Journal for Sex/Gender Emancipation and Resistance, Editorial Board member of the academic journal Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ), and member of the Advisory Committee of the Open Society Foundations’ LGBTI rights initiative.

S_he supported Transgender Europe (TGEU) from its very beginnings in 2005 and served as a TGEU Steering Committee member from 2008 to 2012. Currently, s_he is the lead researcher of TGEU's Transrespect versus Transphobia research project, which s_he initiated in 2009, and resulted in the publications of several reports on transgender and human rights around the world. In particular for each year's Transgender Day of Remembrance and each International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, under the name Trans Murder Monitoring, they issue a list of named trans persons known to have been murdered in the previous twelve months.

• Carsten Balzer. Santo Daime in Deutschland - eine verbotene Frucht aus Brasilien.(Santo Daime in Germany - a forbidden fruit from Brazil ). ZfR, Zeitschrift Für Religionswissenschaft ; 7.1999. [Marburg]: [Diagonal-Verl.], 1999.
  
• Carsten Balzer. Wege zum Heil: die Barquinha ; ein religiöses Rettungsboot auf den Wogen des kulturellen und sozialen Chaosmos amazonischer Welten ; (amazonische Transformationen im Lichte Ayahuascas). (Ways to salvation: the Barquinha; a religious rescue boat on the waves of the cultural and social Chaosmos Amazonian worlds; (Amazonian transformations in the light of ayahuasca) ) Freie Univ., Fachbereich Sozialwiss. II, Magisterarbeit, [ca. 1999]--Berlin, 1999, 1999.
  
• Carsten Balzer. Wege zum Heil: die Barquinha : eine ethnologische Studie zu Transformation und Heilung in den Ayahuasca-Ritualen einer brasilianischen Religion. (Ways to salvation: the Barquinha: an ethnological study of transformation and healing in the ayahuasca rituals of a Brazilian religion). . Mettingen: Brasilienkunde-Verlag, 2003.
  
• Carsten Balzer. "The Beauty and the Beast: Reflections About the Socio-Historical and Subcultural Context of Drag Queens and 'Tunten' in Berlin". In Steven P. Schacht & Lisa Underwood. The Drag Queen Anthology: The Absolutely Fabulous but Flawless Customary World of Female Impersonators. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.
  
• Carsten Balzer. The Great Drag Queen Hype: Thoughts on Cultural Globalization and Autochthony. Paideuma : Mitteilungen Zur Kulturkunde ; 51.2005. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005.
  
• Carsten Balzer,. Gender - Outlaw - Triptychon: eine ethnologische Studie zu Selbstbildern und Formen der Selbstorganisation in den Transgender-Subkulturen Rio de Janeiros (Gender - Outlaw - Triptych: an ethnological study of self-images and forms of self-organization in the transgender subcultures of Rio de Janeiro ), PhD Freie Universität Berlin, 2008.
  
• Jan Simon Hutta & Carsten Balzer. "Identities and Citizenship under Construction: Historicising the 'T' in LGBT Anti-Violance politics in Brazil". In Yvette Taylor & Michelle Addison. Queer Presences and Absences. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
  
• Jan Simon Hutta & Carsten Balzer. "Trans Networking in the Europen Vortex: Between Advocacy and Grassroots Politics". In Phillip Ayoub & David Paternotte. LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
  
• J K Carsten Balzer/Carla LaGata. "Human Rights". TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. 1, 1-2, 2014: 99-103.
  
• Aren A. Aizura, Trystan Cotten, Carsten Balzer/Carla LaGata, Marcia Ochoa, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (eds). Decolonizing the Transgender Imaginary. Duke University Press, 2014.
  

TGEU    WorldCat