Hi everyone, my name is Eliza. I’m delighted to return to the FASoS fold, after nearly seven years away working at Leiden University for the programmes Film and Literary Studies, and Art History.
At FASoS, I’m joining in the position of Associate Professor Gender and Diversity Studies and will be active primarily in the Centre for Gender and Diversity, the research programme of Arts, Media and Culture, and with my home base in the Department of Literature and Art.
I am a visual culture scholar specialised in trans studies and intersectional analysis. My research shares the FASoS spirit of interdisciplinarity: it combines philosophical analysis of aesthetics and embodiment, discursive and visual analysis with methods of travelling concepts, ethnography, and interview.
My intersectional research vision is anchored into the national consortium project that I lead of fifteen plus partners, “The Critical Visitor: Intersectional Approaches for Rethinking & Retooling Accessibility and Inclusivity in Heritage Spaces” (NWO-Creative Industries). This five-year programme experiments with different formats to generate collaboration between scholarly, activist, public, and private partners who conduct Decolonising, Queering, and Cripping cultural activism. Our activities involve sharing, assessing, and developing intersectional approaches that dismantle exclusionary thinking, practices, as well as policy.
My research focuses on not who is simply present in heritage spaces, but who activates the space and how ‘difficult’ or contested materials are handled in the art and archival heritage worlds. I’m pleased that my PhD students on this project, Noah Littel and Liang-kai Yu, are also now with me at FASoS. My developing research is increasingly in conversation with critical archival studies, so I am open to having a reading group or planning focused event on the topic with anyone interested – shoot me an email.
My scholarship is committed to mapping out the interconnections of social realities with cultural productions, that is, how art-making can be socially embedded and culturally responsive. This synergy is also my lived reality I have long collaborated on film festivals and art exhibitions that aim to improve the visibility of gender diversity (2003-present). My latest curated show is “Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture” in the Staten Island, NY museum The Alice Austen House, the former home of the famed lesbian photographer. I hope to generate more collaborations with cultural institutions in South Limburg.
In my free time I can always be found hiding out at the stables riding my lease horse, Miss Marple, with whom I love to do dressage and jumping. She has a big sweet personality and is a white (schimmel) Irish Sporthorse of 11 years old. I’m grateful that my wife is taking up riding so we can spend time together on trail rides – soon in the southern hills!
