PHILOSOPHER, SOCIAL SCIENTIST, FEMINIST
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Marjolein de Boer, PhD

Marjolein de Boer, researcher Tilburg University, empirical philosophy, women, bodies, health and illness

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

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


Filtering Reality. Social Media and Body Image of Adolescents (july 2023 - now)

Bodies in Transition. Making Sense of Menopause (june 2021 - now)

The potentially negative impact of social media use on (pre) adolescents, particularly in terms of body image issues, has been widely discussed. The Dutch government has explored the potential and scope for mandatory media literacy programs. This research project investigates the opportunities for (re)new(ed) media literacy interventions related to (pre)adolescents’ body image.

Co-applicant and researcher (PI: Dr. Anne-Mette Hermans) | Growth-project - Digital Sciences for Society | Tilburg University, The Netherlands

More info on the project can be found here.

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 (Dutch Research Council 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.

PI in the NWO-VENI project | Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Key output: Mimicking myths of menopause; Untracking menopause; ‘Becumming’ oneself as one relates to others.

More info on the project can be found here and here.


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