Lady Bitch Ray

With her very early artistic and musical work - bringing (queer)feminist and sex-positive content into German rap - Reyhan Şahin can be regarded as a pioneer of feminist rap in Germany. Drawing on US artists such as Missy Elliott and Lil' Kim, she was the first to reclaim the term "bitch" in a positive sense within German rap, and to bring feminist, sex-positive content to a wide audience in Germany through her legendary TV appearances.

Prof. Dr Reyhan Şahin, known to many as ‘Lady Bitch Ray’, works as a researcher, author, performance artist, activist, rapper, fashion designer, journalist, speaker and education consultant. She studied linguistics, German language and literature, and educational science in Bremen, and in 2012 was awarded a PhD in linguistics/language science for a foundational social science study on the system of meaning associated with the Muslim headscarf in Germany. Her doctoral thesis, ‘The Meaning of the Muslim Headscarf’, was awarded the German Academic Prize in 2013. She subsequently carried out her postdoctoral project from 2014 to 2017 on the (self-)representation and religiosity of Muslims on social media. Since 2018, she has been conducting research as part of her habilitation on the interrelationships between racism, anti-Semitism, the New Right, right-wing extremism, nationalism, intersectionality, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Alevi (and anti-Kurdish) racism, Islam and gender, including within (post-)migrant communities, at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg. From the winter/spring semester 2025/26, she will hold the visiting professorship in Cultural Studies within the Studium Generale programme at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Alongside this, she works as an author and educational consultant, and participates as an expert in themed reading events and panel discussions, as well as delivering keynote speeches, talks, lectures and workshops. Since 2020, she has also been writing and performing spoken word pieces on topics such as anti-racism, feminism, empowerment, the culture of remembrance and commemorative work, intersectionality and sexuality.