Katleen Gabriels awarded NWO Aspasia grant

About the project

Apps and smart devices are changing how we raise our children, or take care of our parents. Norms and values are not static: morality shapes technology, and technology shapes morality in a process of ‘technomoral change’. This project investigates technomoral change by studying smart monitoring in parenting of younger children and in caretaking of older parents. 

The key questions are: How can smart monitoring contribute to flourishing lives? To what extent does smart monitoring destabilise moral relations between parents and children? To what extent can traditional conceptions of care, autonomy, and responsibility guide us in these shifting practices? 

The main objectives are: first, to study how users practice, reflect on, and perhaps struggle with care, autonomy, and responsibility in their daily routines and use of smart monitoring. Data will be collected in the Netherlands and Flanders. Second, to explicate shifting practices and norms by bringing together different perspectives, in order to develop a normative framework to guide processes of technomoral change.

About the grant

The higher up the career ladder one goes, the fewer women there are. This certainly applies to university education and research in the Netherlands. The Aspasia grant, which is part of Vidi, was introduced almost 25 years ago as a temporary instrument to accelerate the advancement of women scientists to the level of associate professor or full professor.

Vidi applications from female assistant professors that did not get awarded but received very good evaluations from the NWO panel, were eligible for the Aspasia grant of 120,000 euros, on formal condition of promotion to associate professor.

Photography: Joey Roberts