Research

Interdisciplinary Research Projects

Neurodiversity and Videogames

Videogames are an experiential medium par excellence. However, in engagement with atypical experiences regarding neurodiversity (expressed in embodied phenomena such as perception, sociability, emotionality, learning, and attention), the status quo disappoints. Both in game design and the discipline of game studies, interaction with neurodiversity is limited or stigmatizing. PhD Candidate Lisanne Meinen studies the potential of videogames and the practice of gameplay to promote attunement to neurodivergent experiences. Central to her project is the concept of interrelationality; in individual play as well as in gaming as social practice. She problematizes game design that is aimed at generating empathy, which is often too one-directional. Led by care ethics and critical disability studies, she aims to investigate possibilities for more non-hierarchical interaction through attunement. Methodologically, she follows a framework that questions normativity and puts forward divergence as a site of potentiality. The creative-relational practice of interaction with videogames is central in each work package. First, Lisanne looks at the affordances of existing artistic and queer videogames and gaming practices to interact with neurodiversity. Then, she puts forward the gaming interview as a creative-relational method that provides a framework for sharing experiences about neurodiversity. Finally, led by interviews with game designers, she provide ethical recommendations to better engage with neurodiversity in game design.

BOF UA

Supervisors: Kristien Hens, Leni Van Goidsenhoven

Timing: 2020-2024

Talking about chronic pain

Jana Declerq examines the discursive construction of perspectives on the body in chronic pain discourses in a pain clinic. Opposed to mind-body dualism, research from biomedicine, sociology, and philosophy increasingly understands the body as an interplay of physical, psychological, and sociocultural aspects. These different fields have formulated different alternatives to mind-body dualism, and the most common one in biomedicine is the biopsychosocial perspective, which has also become the gold standard for treating chronic pain in specialised pain care. This perspective sees psychological and sociocultural aspects -what we understand as the mind- all as part of the body, rather than standing next to it.

However, this biopsychosocial perspective is fundamentally incompatible with mind-body dualism. This is especially pervasive for chronic pain, as chronic pain often does not have a (purely) physical cause, and because chronic pain patients benefit from treatment focusing on psychosocial aspects. Although these perspectives are conflicting in theory, little is known about which perspectives on the body and on illness health professionals and patients actually construct in practice, whether (some version of) the biopsychosocial perspective on the body co-exists or clashes with (some version of) the socio-culturally dominant perspective of mind-body dualism in health care settings, especially in contexts in which the biopsychosocial model has been adopted as the standard for treatment.

This project explores different perspectives as dynamic discursive constructions, and looks into how they clash and are negotiated and resisted in interaction. Such linguistic analyses unearth a more in-depth understanding of how they emerge in all its complexity in practice, and offer crucial insights into health professional-patient communication. These will serve as a basis for developing knowledge utilisation materials to better understand and aid communication with chronic pain patients in health care settings, such as workshops for health professionals.

NWO (VENI)

Timing: 2021-2026

The Bio-Kin-Tsugi Project

Bio-Kin-Tsugi is a trans-disciplinary tool to bridge science and society and challenge the ethics of synthetic biology. Inspired by the ancient Japanese craft to mend ceramics with gold or silver (Kin-Tsugi), this project re-evaluates the concept of repair and recovery, and introduces bioengineering technologies for growing a “scar” of biomatter – with the help of fungus and bacteria – over the cracks. This novel interpretation of Kin Tsugi with biotechnology is called Bio-Kin-Tsugi. Using synthetic biology approaches, novel biological materials as alternative adhesives will be developed. We expect the involvement of ceramic artists to inspire biotechnologists to look differently at their science and engineering. The creation of Bio-Kin-Tsugi objects will contribute to the emerging and substantial international field of bio-arts and will help inform audiences to shape their opinions on biotechnologies.

The project consists of two parts. The first (more bio-artistic) part will be covered by an artist-engineer/biologist, Christina.stadlbauer (postdoc), and a PhD student (Bénedicte Amery under supervision of professor Marjan De Mey at Ghent University). The second part, a PhD student (starting from October 2022 onwards under supervision of professor Katrien Schaubroeck and dr. Leni Van Goidsenhoven at the University of Antwerp), aims to think about healing, scars, pain, restorative justice, and bereavement from a philosophical angle. As an art form (Bio-)Kin-Tsugi shows rather than hides scars and thus challenges us for a reimagining of concepts like repair and healing. Bio-Kin-Tsugi could, for instance, serve as a metaphor that reorients our thinking of what well-being and flourishing mean in different contexts and for different bodies. The introduction of technologies from synthetic biology, that occupy the boundary of the artificial and the natural, also calls for further reflection on the relation of technology with the microbiological world, and the entanglement between human health with non-human life and non-living objects, and the environment at large.

We orient this part of the research project within the discipline of Health Humanities, a field that brings together a variety of disciplines (the humanities, social sciences, the arts) to understand aspects of the human condition related to health and medicine. It seeks to use humanities knowledge and the arts to improve medical research and practice, but at the same time includes broader approaches to understanding the cultural, ethical, and religious aspects of health, disability, and trauma across human history.

FWO University of Antwerp (Philosophy), Ghent University (engineering sciences)
Professor Marjan De Mey (supervisor, Ghent)
Professor Katrien Schaubroeck (supervisor, Antwerp)
dr. Leni Van Goidsenhoven (co-superviso, Antwerp)
Professor Kristien Hens
Nele Buyst (PhD candidate Antwerp)
dr. Christina Stadlbauer (postdoc, Ghent)
Bénédicte Amery (PhD Candidate Ghent)

Timing: 2022-2026

Towards Empowering Support of Parents with Young Children on the Autism Spectrum

Raising children is not always self-evident.
Parents of young autistic children are sometimes more often than others confronted with daily challenges, resulting in uncertainties regarding their roles and responsibilities in parenthood. By a timely diagnosis and intervention, clinicians may provide some initial guidance: sharing knowledge on autism and adapted parenting practices is key to early intervention. However, lived experience of other parents and insights from neurodiversity theory may give rise to the question of whether such early intervention from professional experts is doing full justice to the many layers of autism as a phenomenon and the diversity of roles and responsibilities of parents in particular. Therefore, this project's central question is how clinicians can support parents of a young child with autism in their multiple roles and responsibilities in an empowering way. First, we aim to gain a layered insight into the roles and responsibilities of parents of young autistic children from different perspectives. Using qualitative methods, we will analyze perspectives from (a) the academic literature on early interventions, (b) parents with lived experience, and (c) neurodiversity scholars. Building on this layered insight, we aim to co-create and test a group-based intervention for parents of young autistic children in collaboration with an advisory group consisting of parents, clinicians and neurodiversity scholars.

FWO

University of Antwerp (Philosophy, Centre of Ethics), KU Leuven (Pedagogy, LAuRes, Child and Youth Psychiatry)

Timing: 2023-2027