In 1986 I
received my bachelor’s degree in Latin American Languages and
Cultures and in 1990 my Master’s degree in Indian Languages and
Cultures, both from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. I
spent the following 10 years balancing my private and professional
life, doing voluntary work in the area of local environmental issues,
caring for my young children, and working as a research
assistant/staff member of the Brussels University Centre for
Development Co-operation (Universitair Centrum voor
Ontwikkelingssamenwerking). Through my activities I came into contact
with the Brussels University Interdisciplinary Centre Leo Apostel
(Clea), where in 2007 I completed my PhD.
The roots of
my research topic can be found in this combination of environmental
concerns, the question of how to balance self-respect (defined as
one’s interests and development) and respect (time) for children
and family, and the matter of genuine intercultural dialogue. It
resulted in a thesis reflecting on the central but philosophically
overlooked questions of what makes life meaningful, how to understand
life, how to understand ourselves in life, and what it means to
understand the other. It became apparent that these questions are
intrinsically related to our idea of ‘the good’, of what is right
or wrong, as implicitly and explicitly present in our worldview.
I have
recently taken up a post-doc position as a fellow of the FWO, where,
in collaboration with others, I am now focussing on the core
‘origins’ of both meaningfulness and ethics. So far, this
phenomenological search has resulted in the concept of ‘non-spatial
in between’ to suggest the non-localisable area where ethics and
meaningfulness arise when people establish a face to face contact.
