Gabriele Rosenthal (born 19 April 1954 in Schwenningen am Neckar, Germany) is a German sociologist and head of Department for Qualitative Methods of the Center for Methods in Social Sciences (Methodenzentrum Sozialwissenschaften) of the University of Göttingen, Germany. Rosenthal is recognized for the introduction of the method of biographical case reconstruction using biographical narrative interviews (Fritz Schütze). She is known for systemizing the influences of the Gestalt theory (Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka), the sociology of knowledge (Karl Mannheim, Alfred Schütz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter L. Berger), and the sociology of figurations and processes (Norbert Elias) to explain the interrelationship between experience, memory and narrative, as well as how social figurations intertwine with individual biographies. Life Gabriele Rosenthal was born in Schwenningen am Neckar in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. She studied sociology, political sciences and psychology at the University of Konstanz. Parallel, she was trained as family therapist. She received her PhD in 1986 from Bielefeld University and her habilitation from the University of Kassel in 1993. Gabriele Rosenthal was also a researcher at the Free University of Berlin, guest lecturer at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and held visiting and associate professorships in Vienna, Cologne, Kassel, and Porto Alegre. In 2002, she was appointed Professor at the Center of Methods in Social Sciences, Göttingen University. From 2009 until 2011, she served as Dean of the Faculty of the Social Sciences of the University of Göttingen. From 2002 until 2010, Gabriele Rosenthal was the President of the Research Committee 38 “Biography and Society” of the International Sociological Association (ISA). She chaired the section on biographical research of the German Sociological Association (DGS) between 1999 and 2003. Gabriele Rosenthal was a member of the Board of the German Sociological Association between 2019 and 2021. Research interests Gabriele Rosenthal is renowned for her contribution to biographical research and generation research in the qualitative social sciences. She has worked on the gestalt and structure of biographical self-presentations, drawing on gestalt theoretical considerations by Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to explain the dialectic relation of experience, memory, and narration. Amongst others, she helped conceptualizing biography as a concept which transgresses the dualism of subject and society (Rosenthal 1995). Further influences on Rosenthal’s approach include the Sociology of knowledge (especially Alfred Schütz, Karl Mannheim, Thomas Luckmann and Peter L. Berger), and the Figurational Sociology of Norbert Elias. In the context of the research project ‘The