Assistant professor in empirical philosophy
With an interest in gender, illness, and medicalization
How do women experience, narrate and make sense of themselves, their bodies and their lives during and after illness or within a medicalization situation? How are ill and medicalized people represented in public, everyday life? How do these cultural, and often normative representations feed into people’s experiences of their illness or medicalization situation? And what are the moral and ethical implications of these personal narrations and cultural representations?
In my research, I focus on subjective experiences and cultural representations of gendered illnesses and medicalization situations. Herein, I combine theoretical philosophical- and ethical insights with qualitative social scientific research methods.
Menopause
I am an assistant professor at Tilburg University. In my NWO-Veni-research project ‘Bodies in Transition. Making Sense of Menopause’, I investigate how women experience their bodies and selves during menopause. This empirical philosophical project analyzes qualitative interviews with women, TV series, and vlogs, and interprets this material through philosophical and ethical theories, as well as vice versa: the interpreted empirical data help me to critically reflect on philosophical theories.
ME/CFS
As a postdoctoral research fellow at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, I was involved in a larger project about the minded body in Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms (MUPS). Here, I researched how the gendered diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is constructed as a psychological and/or somatic condition in news papers, in policy documents, and on social media, and investigated what the ethical implications are of these constructions.
Infertility
As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie/Scientia Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway, I studied infertility and infertility treatment. In this project, entitled ‘Bearing a barren body’, I focused on women’s experiences of infertility treatment and on representations of infertile women and men in popular culture.
Breast Cancer
My PhD thesis, entitled ‘Extended bodies. An empirical-philosophical study to women’s bodily experiences in breast cancer’, deals with the question how women’s bodily breast cancer experiences are co-constructed within and through their lived - social, material, temporal, and narrative - context. I defended my PhD thesis in December 2016 at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Research projects
Bodies in Transition. Making Sense of Menopause (june 2021 - now)
Menopause is largely a silenced phenomenon. If discussed at all, it is primarily perceived as a health problem or as a positive role change for women. This project, which is funded by an NWO-Veni grant, will provide a comprehensive understanding of this bodily transition by analyzing women’s menopausal experiences and relevant philosophical theories about embodiment, womanhood, and aging.
Monitoring menopause (Sept. 2019 - now)
Women’s bodies change during menopause. Menstruation becomes irregular and eventually stops, and women may experience symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweating, a dry(er) vagina, insomnia, or heart palpations. Self-tracking technologies such as apps or wearables are specifically geared towards monitoring and managing these changes. For example, there are specifically tailored menopause apps (e.g., Menopro; Hot Flash Sister), apps for tracking sexual functionality (e.g., SAA app; Vaginal Dryness), sleep apps (e.g., Sleep cycle), Fitbits, and digital heartrate meters. The main objective of the project is to provide insight into women’s usage of self-tracking technologies in menopause, and the ways in which these women-users’ menopausal experiences are affected and shaped by these technologies.
Project coordinator and supervisor, together with Dr. Nadine Bol, of the research trainees Marieke Hendriks and Teddy Eliëns | Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Cultural constructions of chronic fatigue (2019 - 2021)
Contemporary debates about the gendered diagnosis Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)/ Myalgische encephalomyelitis (ME) are characterized by disputes about whether it is a psychological and/or a somatic condition, as well as whether it is an illness to begin with. In this project, I investigate how CFS/ME is constructed as a (non-)illness in Dutch policy documents and news papers. Herein, I focus on conceptual developments of CFS/ME in the last decade, and specifically surrounding the most recent advice about CFS/ME by the Dutch Health Council.
Postdoc project (part of the NWO-VICI project ‘Mind the Body’) | Tilburg University, The Netherlands
For more info about the larger project of which this PhD project was a part, click here
bearing a barren body (2017 - 2019)
Over the last three decades, the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) – like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), or Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) – has increased enormously. This project analyzes women’s experiences in infertility treatment by starting from the idea that their experiences do not take shape in a vacuum. It explores how sociocultural discourses about woman- and motherhood, the nuclear family, infertility, un/natural fertilization, and technologically engineered bodies shape the ways women experience themselves, their lives, and bodies in the process and aftermath of infertility treatment.
Marie Curie (FP7)/Scientia postdoctoral Fellowship | University of Oslo, Norway
For more info about this project, click here
Extended bodies in breast cancer (2011 - 2016)
Breast cancer severely affects and disrupts the lives and bodies of women. Many diagnosed women do not only face their own mortality, but also the emotional and physical consequences of undergoing surgical interventions and medical treatments. These women have to develop new and altered ways of relating and giving meaning to themselves, their lives and their bodies. This project describes and analyzes women's embodied illness experiences and sense-making strategies. Herein, it focuses on how these women's experiences and meaning making efforts are shaped within and through their lived material, narrative, social, and temporal contexts.
PhD project | Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Download my PhD thesis here
For more info about the larger project of which this PhD project was a part, click here