Prof. A.A.M. van Nistelrooij (Inge)

My expertise is in the fields of philosophy, ethics, and care ethics. I look into the question of how people understand themselves and how relations, practices and dialogues are involved in this self-understanding. My point of departure is the idea that one's being is a continuous process of becoming, by living together with others, by dialogues that one has with others, and through the stories and expressions that are told by others about who one is, could or should become. And also by participating in practices, like a family practice in which one grows up, a school practice in which one is educated, in a wide context of social, local, temporal, economic and political factors that are all formative of who one is and becomes. Against this background, I focus upon the self-understanding of 'mothers'. What are they going through in their transition to maternity? How do they experience this, also in the bodily sense? What is the impact of caring for a vulnerable and dependent child on one's own life and identity? And how is power involved, like formal regulations of parental leave, cultural expectations, and normativity concerning a 'good' mother? How do mothers experience their deviating from such norms, for instance by being young, old, poor, trans, inter, non-binary, man, migrant, chronically ill, homeless, addicted, single? And how do others take care of (future) mothers, in midwifery and obstetric care, and in later phases of mothering?