About Marjolein de Boer

Current

Research: Bodies in transition; Everyday health activism and Ideal vaginas/vulvas

Currently, I am an assistant professor Health Humanities at Tilburg University and I am mainly doing research about everyday health activism in relation to menopause and being trans. Since January 2025, I'm also the scientific advisor and supervisor in a research project about everyday health activism in the last 100 years, together with Atria, Kennisinstituut Emancipatie en Gender. I am also collaborating with Dr. Hannelore van Bavel and Dr. Anne-Mette Hermans in a research project on ideal vaginas and vulvas.

I also work on my NWO-VENI project, entitled ‘Bodies in Transition. Making Sense of Menopause’. The central question in this study is how women experience and make sense of their menopausal transition. For example, I investigate how sexuality and intimacy plays a pivotal role in the ways in which women come to understand themselves in their menopausal transition, how self-tracking technologies influence and shape the ways in which women in menopause experience their bodies and selves, and how myths about menopause are (re)produced in popular culture and have existential significance. In this project, I analyze in-depth interviews, media outlets, and I draw and reflect on literature in a.o. social anthropology, sociology, health sciences, and STS, as well as on the rich philosophical (phenomenological) corpus about identity, embodiment, and womanhood (and particularly on the works of Simone de Beauvoir). Besides from actually doing empirical philosophy research, I also reflect on what it means to do such research. Together with Kristin Zeiler, I recently wrote about this interdisciplinary research method - that we call Qualitative Critical Phenomenology.

In addition to working on my main research project, I’m also involved in other projects, such as the project ‘Filtering reality: Social Media and Body Image of Adolescents’ (Digital Sciences for Society-project, Tilburg University), and about the intersection of epistemic injustice and gender in medicine.

Supervision, teaching, extracurricular activities

Besides from my research activities,I am involved in the Master program ‘Health Humanities’ at Tilburg University as the thesis coordinator, thesis-supervisor, and lecturer. In the fall, I teach the course ‘Diversity and Equity in Health and Medicine’. At Tilburg University College, I teach the course ‘Bodies in Anthropology and Philosophy’. I am also involved in the BA program of Cultural Studies at Tilburg University - namely in co-constructing and teaching the courses ‘Bodies in Media’ and ‘Practices of Digital Activism’. Additionally, I'm the co-supervisor in Hans-Georg Eilenberger’s PhD-project ‘Age and existence. An empirical-philosophical investigation to late life’, and in Ingeborg van den Bold's PhD project ‘Mindfulness and the body in the experience of being ill’. Since March 2022, I'm a member of the Tilburg Young Academy (TYA), specifically working on the topic gender equity in academia. As a TYA-member, I was part of a working- and steering group on (improving) social safety at the university. I’m also a member of the research ethics committee at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (Tilburg University). Finally, together with Lisa Guntram (Linköping University), I'm the co-founder of the ‘Women's Marginalized Health Network’ (WOMAHN), which aims to provide a platform for researchers to share, discuss, and disseminate their research about marginalization in relation to women's health. For more info on the WOMAHN research network, click here.

Past

Post-doc project (2019 - 2021)

At the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, I was a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer . During my time as a postdoc, I researched socio-cultural discourses surrounding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), more specifically in the most recent Dutch Health Council advisory process on ME/CFS and in Dutch national newspapers. I am currently also writing an article on literary representations of chronic fatigue.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doc project (2017-2019)

Before my postdoc at Tilburg University, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (FP7) / Scientia fellow at the Institute for Health and Society at the University of Oslo, Norway. During this time, I studied experiences and representations of infertility within a personal research-project entitled ‘Bearing a barren body’. Here, I interviewed women who have (had) infertility treatment and I analyzed representations of infertility in popular culture. This study resulted, among other things, in articles about women’s experiences of melancholy and mourning in infertility treatment, their self-care experiences in infertility, and about representations of infertile women and men in reality TV shows and fiction TV series.

PhD project (2011-2016)

As a PhD student at the department of Health, Ethics and Society of Maastricht University, the Netherlands, I researched women’s bodily experiences in breast cancer from an empirical-philosophical perspective. The field work I conducted during my PhD consisted out of in-depth interviews with women who have (had) breast cancer, as well as duo-interviews with these women and their partners. I also studied women’s personal breast cancer weblogs. In the spring of 2013, I was a visiting scholar at the Department of Thematic Studies at Linköping University, and at the Department of Practical Knowledge at Södertörn University (both in Sweden). I defended my PhD thesis successfully in December 2016.

Under/graduate studies (2004-2011)

My background is in philosophy (BA in 2009; research MA in 2011, both with distinction) and sociology (BSc in 2008). I did most of my academic education at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In addition, I spent a semester at Stellenbosch University in South-Africa and a semester at DePaul University, Chicago, USA.

Academic service (selection)

Member Research Ethics Committee - Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University

Co-founding Member WOMAHN - Women's Marginalized Health Network (European research network), 2023.

Member Tilburg Young Academy (TYA), 2022 - now, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Member Klankbordgroep en werkgroep Sociale Veiligheid, 2022 - now, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Board member Graduate School WTMC - Science, Technology and Modern Culture, 2014 - 2016

grants

2025 | In-kind research/supervision funding Atria, Kennisinstituut Emancipatie & Gender for a project on ‘Everyday health activism’ | Working in this project are one archivist, a policy maker, two research interns | Atria, Kennisinstituut Emancipatie & Gender

2024 | research incentive grant to support ERC proposal writing | Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University | €2500

2024 | grant for the organization of the Dutch conference ‘Vrouwenzorgen’ | Tranzo, Tilburg University, applied with Anne-Mette Hermans | €2500

2023 | Riksbankens Jubileumfonds, Sweden | Women's Marginalized Health and Embodiment Research Network | applied with co-founder Lisa Guntram | 449900 kr (ca. €38.000)

2023 | co-applicant of Growth project Digital Sciences for Society, Tilburg University (PI: Anne-Mette Hermans) | Filtering reality: (Re)constructing media literacy programs related to body image on social media in co-creation with pre- and early adolescents. | ca. €50.000

2022 | Research Policy Incentive fund, Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University | Women's Marginalized Health and Embodiment Research Network | € 10.000

2020 NWO-Veni (Talent programme - Dutch Research Council) | Research project ‘Bodies in Transition. Making Sense of Menopause’ | € 250.000

2019 TSHD Research-trainee grant (Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences - Research trainee programme) | Research project ‘Monitoring Menopause’ | ca. €10.000

2018 Society for Ricoeur Studies travel grant | Conference Ricoeur Association in Los Angeles, USA | €500

2016 Marie Skłodowska-Curie (FP7) / Scientia Fellows Cofund Programme Grant (European Commission / University of Oslo) | Research project ‘Bearing a Barren body’ | ca. €190.000

2016 CAHPRI PhD Grant | University of Maastricht | €2000

2016 WTMC PhD Grant | Graduate School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture | €500

2013 Association for Scientific Research Limburg (SWOL) grant | Research stay in Sweden | €1500

2013 Jo Kolk Studiefonds study grant | Research stay in Sweden | €1000

2011 Huygens Scientific Grant | Erasmus Mundus Master ‘International Humanitarian Action’ | declined the grant because it conflicted with accepting a PhD-position

2011Erasmus Mundus Scholarship | Erasmus Mundus Master ‘International Humanitarian Action’ | declined the grant because it conflicted with accepting a PhD-position

2010 RU/Philosophy Faculty Travel Grant | Research stay at DePaul University, Chicago | €600

2010 NOISE Travel grant | NOISE Summerschool 2010, School for Genderstudies, Radboud University Nijmegen | €500

2008 SNUF Study grant | Research stay at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa | €1200