Maud Oostindie (M.M.M.)

Maud Oostindie is a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her project aims to empirically understand online communication and conflict by looking at cultural scripts of conflict escalation and de-escalation. Trough digital ethnographic fieldwork she analyses how different communities of practice regulate conflict, and how they respond to strategies of de-escalation as employed by other users and by non-human (e.g. AI) agents. This PhD research is part of the Volkswagen Stiftung funded interdisciplinary research project Deliberation Laboratory, which aims to develop an artificial intelligence virtual moderator that uses culturally and linguistically situated methods to make online communication and deliberation healthier.

Her research is supervised by Prof. dr. John Parkinson and Dr. Anna Harris, and Maud is part of the Maastricht University STS research group MUSTS. Additionally, Maud serves as the PhD representative for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Maud holds an MA in Globalisation and Development Studies from Maastricht University and a BSc in Anthropology from Utrecht University. Before starting her PhD project, Maud worked for three years as a teacher in the Philosophy Department, teaching across the various education programmes at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.