NWO PhD talent grant to study health inequalities for Ilse Dijkstra
A PhD talent proposal of Klasien Horstman and Bart Penders for Ilse Dijkstra was selected by NWO Humanities. The proposal is entitled Making up (un)healthy people. Unpacking the scientific engines of health inequalities and Ilse will start with this in September.
Ilse organized a free bachelor European Public Health and she did the master European Studies on Society, Science and Technology, both at Maastricht University, both cum laude.
A summary: While growing socioeconomic health inequalities are a major sociopolitical concern, insights into how health sciences like health promotion and epidemiology have contributed to these inequalities are lacking. In his essay ‘Kinds of People’ (2007), the philosopher Ian Hacking argues that the human sciences, through their classification machineries, have ‘made up people’. These sciences, he states, ‘create kinds of people that in a certain sense did not exist before’ (2007, p. 2).
In line with these insights, scholars in gender and post-colonial studies have analysed how scientific classifications co-shaped gendered and racial identities and inequalities. However, similar studies on social health inequalities remain missing from the literature. To address this gap, we will study how post-war scientific and policy practices in the Netherlands have co-shaped classifications of socioeconomic health inequalities and have made up ‘unhealthy people of low socioeconomic status’ and ‘healthy people of high socioeconomic status’. This study will meet the urgent need for reflection on the role of science with respect to health inequalities between people of ‘high’ and ‘low’ socioeconomic status.
Ilse won the ESST European Undergraduate Essay Prize 2020 with the essay ‘Known to be unhealthy. How social epidemiology produces health differences.’ With her master thesis: ‘Made to be unhealthy. On the performativity of health interventions on inequalities’ Ilse won the Hanneke Schreursprijs 2022 of the municipality Utrecht for public health. Her master thesis was nominated for the Dutch national thesis award of the Sociaal Economische Raad (Social and Economic Council) and won the second prize.