Vici grant for Jenny Slatman: Mind the Body in Health Care
PRESS RELEASE 17 February 2017 - Professor of Medical Humanities Jenny Slatman is to receive an NWO grant worth € 1.5 million that will allow her to do further research on the meaning of the body in health care. Because the body is mainly perceived as a biological entity in health care, various embodied dimensions of health problems go off the radar. As a result, somatic problems are often given psychological explanations and mental problems are increasingly seen as brain deficiencies. Slatman wants to develop a broader view of embodiment.
Unexplained symptoms, obesity, and depression
Slatman is one of 34 top researchers (12 female, 22 male) who today have been awarded a Vici grant, with which NWO invests in top talent. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands and is part of NWO’s Talent Scheme. The funding will enable the grant recipients to develop their own innovative research line for the next five years and build up their own research group. Slatman’s group will conduct research into the meaning of ‘the body’ in health and medicine, related to three important health problems in the Netherlands: somatically unexplained physical symptoms, obesity, and depression.
Philip Eijlander Diversity Program
Jenny Slatman is one of the three female professor recently appointed at the Tilburg School of Humanities as part of the Philip Eijlander Diversity Program. This program has made extra funding available to recruit talented women or to promote them to positions as associate or full professor. In this context, Slatman was appointed to the chair of Medical Humanities at the Department of Culture Studies on January 1, 2017. The Philip Eijlander Diversity Program, named after former Rector Magnificus Professor Philip Eijlander, is aimed to address the underrepresentation of women in the higher positions.
Philosopher Jenny Slatman (1969) worked as an associate professor at Maastricht University from 2010 to 2016, where she headed the research group on Bodily Integrity of Blemished Bodies. Between 2004 and 2010, she worked at Tilburg University as an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy.
NOTE TO EDITORS
For more information, please contact spokesperson Tineke Bennema, phone 06 - 196 785 21 or at persvoorlichters@tilburguniversity.edu. Jenny Slatman can be reached at 013 - 466 8347 or via e-mail j.slatman@tilburguniversity.edu.
On March 8 (International Women’s Day), during the Gender Unlimited Festival, the laureates will be presented who have been appointed as part of the Philip Eijlander Diversity Program. Jenny Slatman will be present as well. More information