Projects
Italian Criminal Anthropology and the Legacy of Cesare Lombroso in the Age of Totalitarianism KU Leuven
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), the founding father of modern criminology, is best known for his theory of the “criminal man”. In a nutshell, Lombroso thought that criminality was biologically inherited and that criminals could be identified by physical stigmata that confirmed them as being atavistic or savage. The legacy of Lombroso is still controversial, as several historians have claimed that his biological conception of the “born criminal” ...
Towards an anthropology of anorexia nervosa: Meanings of thinness and dysfunctional eating among black females in Johannesburg Ghent University
The trend in public opinion to conceptualize anorexia nervosa as an illness of the white, female upper-class ignores its occurrence in atypical communities. In South Africa, accounts of anorexia among the black population have been reported since the 1990s. However, current knowledge on these cases holds some considerable gaps. First, there is unclarity on the prevalence of anorexia among black South Africans, as different research methods ...
Bildung revisited: the development of a new conceptual framework of Bildung starting from Charles Taylor’s philosophical anthropology KU Leuven
The last decades our higher educational system has known some notable tendencies: growing specialization, functional reduction and dominance of instrumental reason. These evolutions risk to neglect an important aspect in its pedagogical mission which is traditionally linked to Bildung, the development of pupils and students as integral persons. Yet several stakeholders in education feel the need of rearticulating this important ...
Bildung revisited: the development of a new conceptual framework of Bildung starting from Charles Taylor's philosophical anthropology. University of Antwerp
Of matter and man. The development of Christian medical anthropology in early Byzantium and its relation to ancient philosophy, medicine and the Church Fathers. KU Leuven
The present project intends to delineate the development of Christian medical anthropology in the crucial period of transmission of the intellectual heritage from antiquity to the Middle Ages through a comparative and contextualized study of a representative corpus of Byzantine texts on the constitution of man from the 7th through the 9th c. A.D. Founded on the Platonic tradition, a basic premise for any account on the nature of humankind in ...
Human life? From philosophy of life to philosophical anthropology: a transnational and transdisciplinary inquiry. Ghent University
This project proposes a historical and systematic study of German and French intellectual projects between 1870 and 1940 labelled 'Philosophy of Life,' 'Biological Philosophy,' and 'Philosophical Anthropology.' The core hypothesis is that they share an alternative conception of philosophy, called here heterodox naturalism, which (1) resists reductive naturalisms as well as idealist and analytical approaches, and (2) seeks to articulate an ...
Reconsidering the Adaptive Capacity of Asion Settlements. Disaster Resilient Urbanism in Interaction with Humanitarion Responses. KU Leuven
Recent international policies stress the need to (A) build more sustainable and resilient in order to decrease urban disasters that follow natural hazards and to (B) transcend the humanitarian-development divide [1]. Acknowledging that urban emergencies are increasing, a holistic framework for urban disaster resilience to respond to and prepare for disaster is indispensible (Global Alliance for Urban Crises, 2016a). Urbanism as key discipline ...
Analysis of the moral responsibility and its antropological foundations in the thought of Max Scheler and Karol Wojtyla: reconstruction and revaluation Ghent University
In the thought of both Max Scheler and Karol Wojtyla the concept of moral responsibility and its justification plays a crucial role. In my study I would like to examine to what extend a plea for moral responisibility within the framework of "global justice" and "global ethics" can be founded on the insights of both Scheler and Wojtyla and h ow these insights can be useful as a rejection of moral indifference and passivity.
Re-membering "strange compositions": a visual anthropological inquiry with Flemish elderly with dementia into inclusive trajectories and rhizomatic narrativity. KU Leuven
There is a space for people with dementia in contemporary society. Their personhood in despite of the disease is recognized, the quality of care has considerably increased and we can relate to them by sharing stories: stories about who they once were, before the dementia. Looking through a personhood lens, we re-member them: as the embodiment of a rich life story and as citizens of our community. A person with dementia, however, apart ...