People
Director
Dr. E. Wesseling (associate professor)
Lies Wesseling is a literary historian who has broadened her interests to include issues and perspectives from cultural history. Her research is on the cultural construction of childhood in fiction (novel, film, photography, children’s literature) and science (anthropology, developmental psychology). Her current projects focus on narrative models for the kinning of foreigners in global adoption. Lies Wesseling is the project leader of the N W O funded research projects Emergent Cultural Literacy: Assimilating Children’s Literature and PLACIM: Towards a Platform for a Cultural History of Children’s Media.
Fellows
Dr. Agnes Andeweg (lecturer)
Agnes Andeweg’s field of expertise is twentieth-century Dutch literature, with a special interest in the diverse ways in which modern literature addresses religious and sexual taboos. She wrote a monograph on the Gothic mode in Dutch literature, while her current work is on the role of postwar fiction in the construction of the self-image of the Netherlands as a sexually liberated nation (sexual nationalism).
Drs. Annette de Bruijn (PhD candidate)
Annette de Bruijn is a researcher in the NWO-funded research program Emergent Cultural Literacy: Assimilating Children's Literature, together with Inge Verouden and Karen Ghonem at the department of religion studies of Tilburg University. Her project concerns children's poetry and canon building processes in young children within contemporary multi-ethnic Dutch classrooms. Which features in poetry ensure a close fit between a juvenile, ethically diverse audience and the poetical text? Not only textual features are taken into consideration here, but also cultural and developmental features of the children involved.
Supervisors: Maaike Meijer and Piet Mooren.
Dr. habil. Ulrike Brunotte (associate professor)
Ulrike Brunotte studies the co-construction of religion, literature, and culture, taking a special interest in narrative constructions of gendered, religious, and sexual identities in (post)colonial discourses. Brunotte is an expert in masculinity studies, more specifically on male bonding and ritual theory. Her current research deals with modern (re)inventions of antiquity in literature, ‘New Dance’ and religious theory around 1900.
Elena Fronk, MA (PhD)
Elena Fronk works within the field of Aging Studies Her project investigates the performance of age identities in online dating sites for elderly. Supervisors: Aagje Swinnen and Maaike Meijer. Working as an assistant to Aagje Swinnen, Elena hosts the website of the newly established "European Network of Aging Studies" (ENAS), and co-organized the 7th International Symposium of Cultural Gerontology, the inaugural conference of ENAS: "THEORIZING AGE: CHALLENGING THE DISCIPLINES".
Click here for the ENAS website.
Annette Hendrikx MA(researcher)
Annette Hendrikx is a researcher in the ZOnMW funded research program Beyond Autonomy and language: Towards a Disability Studies Perspective on Dementia, together with Aagje Swinnen, Ruud Hendriks and Ike Kamphof. She is committed to making the voices of people with a disability audible. In this particular project, she focuses on the communication and expression of people with dementia in various artistic practices, engaging in ethnographic inquiry into projects of artists who work with people with dementia in the performative and visual arts.
External links:
- Kunst en Dementie.nl
- ZonMW. Voorbij autonomie en taal naar een disability studies perspectief op dementie
Dr. Louis van den Hengel (lecturer)
Louis van de Hengel researches the ways in which human beings shape and reshape their embodied 'selves' in interaction with works of art within in particular cultural and historical contexts. His disciplinary background is in classics, Roman archaeology and classical art history has gradually evolved into a specialization in contemporary gender and diversity studies, with a focus on critical theories of embodiment and subjectivity.
Prof. Maaike Meijer (full professor)
Maaike Meijer is an expert within the field of modern Dutch literature and popular culture, most notably poetry and (popular) song. She has published extensively on the cultural construction of femininity and masculinity in the production and reception of high brow, middle brow and low brow Dutch literature. Meijer also takes a theoretical and practical interest in life writing, as becomes manifest in her widely acclaimed biography of the Dutch poet M. Vasalis.
Click here for Professor Meijer's personal website.
Drs. Hein Schoer (PhD)
Hein Schoer is a musician, audio engineer and cultural researcher. His dissertation covers cultural soundscape production and presentation issues such as representation of the Other, sound education in the museum, and source-bound soundscape composition. Supervisor: Maaike Meijer
Constance Sommerey, MA (PhD)
Constance Sommerey works within the cultural history of science. Her project Resilient Recapitulation. Ramifications of an undead theory in German culture (1860-1960) investigates the cultural afterlife “(‘Nachwirkung’) of Ernst Haeckel’s evolutionary narrative in pedagogical texts, i.e. school books and children's literature. This project aims at a better understanding of the role narratives play in the cultural conservation of scientific ideas long after their scientific disqualification. Supervisors: Lies Wesseling, Jo Wachelder (department of history, Fasos) and Maaike Meijer.
Eliza Steinbock is a cultural analyst with expertise in critical theory, (trans)gender studies, and film philosophy. Her current research reassesses the transdisciplinary concept of mimesis from the point of view of transgender studies. It examines different somatechnical configurations of mimesis, aesthetics and affect in trans arts; cases include literature, film, ceramics, dance, and electronic arts. The project is at the same time a refashioing of mimesis to highlight the somatechnics of imitation, reproduction, and representation, as it is a claim on the theoretical import of trans arts for the field of aesthetics. She serves as an arts editor for the new journal, Transgender Studies Quarterly (Duke), and has been a co-organizer of the biannual Netherlands Transgender Film Festival (2003-2009).
Dr. Aagje Swinnen (Assistant Professor)
Aagje Swinnen publishes on the representation of age and gender in literature, film and photography. Her research perspectives on aging from the social sciences. Swinnen is a founder member of the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS). In October 2011, she hosted the conference Theorizing Age: Challenging the Disciplines, which inaugurated this network.
Click here for the ENAS website.
Drs. Inge Verouden (PhD)
Inge Verouden is a researcher within the NWO funded research program Emergent Cultural Literacy\: Assimilating Children’s Literature, together with Annette de Bruijn and Karen Ghonem (Tilburg University) Her project Formulaic Narrative Genres deals with a selection of so-called Einfache Formen, i.e. fairy tales, riddles, trickster tales and serial stories from Western and non-Western cultural backgrounds This project focuses on prototypical heroes and plot structures as key factors of canonicity in narrative genres for the very young. Supervisors: Lies Wesseling, Jeanne Kurvers (Tilburg University), Maaike Meijer.
Support Staff
Wilma Lieben (secretariat and financial affairs)
Wilma Lieben is the office manager of the Centre for Gender and Diversity. She takes care of its external and internal communication and finances, she offers administrative support to the director and to the fellows of the Centre, also contributing to the organization of its scientific workshops, symposia, and conferences.
