SPSSI Grant-in-Aid

Together with Thekla Morgenroth (PI) and Ruthie Pliskin, I received a small research grant from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) to execute the project “The implications of non-stereotypical gender performance for the denial of trans identities.”

In this project, we examine how the gender/sex binary (i.e., an ideology that constructs gender as binary and following directly from biological sex) leads to the denial of identity to non-binary individuals and trans women and men.

LGBTQI+ Rights: On Modern Implicit Forms of Exclusion

This Monday, I will contribute to a webinar on LGBTQI+ rights. Psychologists who are member of the Dutch Association of psychologists can register HERE

Queering the Curriculum

For those of you who, like me, missed the latest Academia@WorkplacePride live webinar in the  “Keeping Members Connected” series of the Workplace Pride Foundation, you can watch it HERE

The topic of academia and the inherent challenges for LGBTI persons studying or working within its many layers, is an area sorely in need of attention and discussion. After the inaugural webinar on the 24thof August 2020, Academia@WorkplacePride wants to make further progress and look more deeply into substantive topics.

“Queering the Curriculum” 

This webinar focuses on the educational aspects of academia and in particular the curriculum. Is there an LGBTI lens on the curriculum? If so, what are the implications and is this as relevant in the STEM disciplines as it is in the humanities and the social sciences?

Speakers from the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden will discuss how they can be more inclusive on the basis of the following questions:

• What does it mean to 'queer' a curriculum?

• What is heteronormative in their discipline?

• How do different faculties incorporate queer concepts?

• Is the curriculum queered in the Netherlands just like as in other countries or are their national differences?

Event:             Academia@WorkplacePride “Queering the Curriculum”
Date/Time:    Monday, November 23, 2020: 12:00 - 13:00 CEST
Audience:      Workplace Pride Members, stakeholders, and friends

Moderator:   Dr. Andrew DJ Shield (Assistant Professor of
                        Migration History, Leiden University, Humanities)

Guest Speakers: 

• Prof.dr. Martine de Vries (Professor in Medical Ethics and Health Law at Leiden University Medical Center)

• Dr. Marie-Louise Janssen (Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality studies at the University of Amsterdam)

• Looi van Kessel (University Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society)

Travelling Concepts on Air

I highly recommend this podcast Travelling Concepts on Air by my colleagues Tessa Diphoorn and Brianne McGonigle-Leyh from the Utrecht Young Academy. Each week they interview academics from different disciplines on a particular concept (the first episode is on "War") and see whether it travels within and across disciplines. Exciting for anyone interested in interdisciplinarity!

Exciting new project underway, subsidized by the Goldschmeding Foundation

How diverse and inclusive are Dutch organizations? And how can they continue to develop their D&I policy? These are the central questions in the project ‘It has to work’, a collaboration between our research team at Utrecht University, Diversity in Practice and the NIM Foundation, for which we recently received a research grant from the Goldschmeding Foundation.

You can read more about it HERE (in Dutch).

BNR podcast on how to create an inclusive workplace

For the BNR Podcast series “De Werkprofessor,” I was interviewed on how to create an inclusive workplace

You can listen to it here.

Interdisciplinary collaboration with Industrial Design student Pascalle Ickenroth

Pascalle Ickenroth, Industrial Design student at TU Eindhoven wrote a blog about our recent collaboration. Under the supervision of Daniel Tetteroo, Martine Veldhuizen and myself, she worked on creating the design guidelines for an interactive communication tool that should help employers and employees in starting a dialogue about LGBTI data collection at work. Interdisciplinary work is not easy, but the experience brought us many new insights and ideas for further developing this project.

Can you hear whether someone is gay?

Is there a relationship between your manner of speech and your sexual orientation? And if so, what do listeners do with that information? These are the questions featuring in the newest podcast of Zeg, created by Hanneke Bax and Tim Bosselaar.

My contribution was to flip the question on its head and wonder why we do not ask similar questions about “heterosexual speech,” and to discuss the apparent heteronormativity in what we consider professional and what not.

The (non)sense of anti-bias training programs

To facilitate diversity and inclusion in the workplace, organizations often implement anti-bias training programs. But are these actually effective? And if so, how should organizations go about implementing them?

In this factsheet, Melissa Vink, Wiebren Jansen, Naomi Ellemers, Beatriz Monteiro Graça Casquinho, Bedriye Kuyumcu, and myself review the facts and give practical advice for organizations that wish to implement their own anti-bias training program.

Nominated for the Agnites Vrolikprijs

I had the great honor of being a finalist for the 2020 Agnites Vrolik Award, which was awarded last Monday in the beautiful Masquerade Hall of Utrecht University’s academy building.

Erik van Sebille was picked as the winner for his important and innovative work on plastic-free oceans, but we were all given the stage to present our work; a great opportunity to showcase my work on the Netherlands Inclusiveness Monitor.