Dr M. La Haije (Marileen)

Marileen La Haije is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Cultures. Her research focuses on mental health and human rights in Latin American arts-based practices.

Locura y trauma en la ficción centroamericana reciente (Brill 2023), based on her dissertation, offers an innovative analysis of the intersections between madness and trauma in recent Central American literature on (post)war. A central argument of her book is that these literary texts challenge the taboo of madness in Latin American contexts of memory, by showing that talking about madness does not necessarily lead to stigmatizing victims of political violence or disqualifying their stories about traumatic experiences. The book won the Netherlands School for Literary Studies’ 2023 award for best published scholarly book.

Marileen’s current project focuses on arts-based practices in Latin America that promote the human rights of people who experience mental suffering. These practices are diverse, including narrative roleplaying games, textile works, mural projects, documentary films, and more. Marileen collaborates closely with artists, human rights advocates, healthcare and social workers, scholars and other knowledge actors engaged with mental health and human rights activism in Latin America, through in-depth interviews, joint publications, co-teaching and public engagement activities.

Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Cologne, Germany. She earned her PhD at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History at Radboud University.

• Memory, Materiality and Affect