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Kristin Zeiler

Professor

To meet health challenges, we need to understand existential and socio-cultural aspects of them, and how illnesses, medical diagnoses, and technologies can shape our ways of perceiving and experiencing ourselves, our bodies, our agency, and the world

Philosophy of medicine, medical humanities, and interdisciplinary health research

Rooted in philosophy of medicine and empirical philosophy, I work in the interdisciplinary field of medical humanities. I also work with research that combines medical humanities and biomedicine.

To understand and meet complex health challenges, more is needed than biomedicine. We also need to understand existential, philosophical, socio-cultural and biopolitical dimensions of illness, suffering, and health. Phenomenology of medicine and critical phenomenology of medicine are philosophical research fields well suited for the inquiry of how illness, loss, suffering, pain, socio-cultural norms, medical diagnoses, and medical technologies help shape our very ways of perceiving and experiencing ourselves, others, and the world that we live. Further, medical sociology shares an interest in norms about bodies, medical diagnoses, and medical technologies.

My academic background is interdisciplinary, with a focus on philosophy of medicine, medical ethics, empirical philosophy, and to some extent, medical sociology. Qualitative critical phenomenology is one of the methods that I work with, from within the field of empirical philosophy. Qualitative critical phenomenology comprises a combination of methods and perspectives from qualitative research and phenomenological philosophy, and it is apt for the inquiry of how illness, norms or medical technologies can shape subjectivity.

A large part of my research entails interdisciplinary knowledge production. As an example, I combine perspectives and methods from within philosophy of medicine with that of science and technology studies, for the sake of a nuanced understanding of medical practices, discourses, and lived experiences of illnesses – while also inquiring into how these perspectives might be most productively combined. In two on-going book projects, I investigate how critical phenomenology and feminist technoscience studies can be combined in analyses of subjectivity, norms about bodies, agency and knowledge-production practices within health care. From within these perspectives, different questions are asked, and different methods are used, yet they share an interest in subjectivity or subjectivities, norms, values, and the conditions for knowledge production. I also research ethical aspects of the development and use of medical technologies and therapies. This side or part of my research can be described as interdisciplinary medical humanities and bioethics.

Further, together with colleagues, I work with research that combines medical humanities with biomedicine. In this kind of research, researchers with very different academic backgrounds work together. We examine and develop methods for combining perspectives and methods from medical humanities and for example rehabilitation medicine, neuroradiology, and neurobiology – for the sake of a better understanding of new conditions such as the post COVID-19 condition. We also examine epistemological challenges with this kind of interdisciplinary research.

Previous research of mine has explored ethical, philosophical, and socio-cultural issues related to climate change that affects health, reproductive technologies, organ donation, and dementia. The empirical foci have varied, but through-out my research, I examine questions related to lived experiences of illness, pain, and health, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, embodiment, norms about bodies, agency, and how epistemological perspectives and choices of methods within medical humanities and biomedicine impact on the knowledge being produced. I have led projects on, for example, norms about parenthood and parents’ experiences of donating a kidney to their child, and on how norms about sexed embodiment can be expressed and enacted within specific medical practices and help to shape decisions about genital surgery when a child is born with intersex anatomy. My research has also examined the role of embodiment in relational autonomy conceptions, conditions for global bioethics, and how pain and illness can shape bodily self-awareness.

International Experience and Collaborations

I have spent several periods as guest researcher abroad, including one year as Pro Futura Fellow at Cambridge University, UK, (2014/2015) as part of a five-year Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, a post doc and internship at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, (2005), and one year as guest researcher at Cardiff University, UK (2000/2001). Among my central international collaboration partners are colleagues at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University.

Publications

Selection of the latest publications in LiU DIVA

2024

Stephen Woroniecki, Victoria Wibeck, Kristin Zeiler, Björn-Ola Linnér (2024) The lived experiences of transformations: The role of sense-making and phenomenology analyses Environmental Science and Policy, Vol. 159, Article 103797 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Marjolein de Boer, Kristin Zeiler (2024) Qualitative critical phenomenology Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Jane Macnaughton, Kristin Zeiler (2024) Reimagining illness through post-COVID-19 condition: the need for radically interdisciplinary health research The Lancet, Vol. 404, p. 840-841 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Kristin Zeiler, Sofia Morberg Jämterud, Anna Bredström, Anestis Divanoglou, Richard Levi (2024) A Qualitative Phenomenological Philosophy Analysis of Affectivity and Temporality in Experiences of COVID-19 and Remaining Symptoms after COVID-19 in Sweden Journal of Medical Humanities (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Sofia Morberg Jämterud, Lisa Guntram, Kristin Zeiler (2024) The Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Linköping University. The importance of encounters between the medical humanities and bioethics Acta Bioethica, Vol. 30, p. 155-157 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

Book project

Sweden belongs to the countries that according to the OECD and the World Health Organization categories are classified as “aged” or “superaged,” based on the proportion of the population above the age of 65 years. High age is also the largest risk factor for dementia, and the importance of early testing for mild cognitive impairment and dementia have been emphasized by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare.

In the book project Aged Subjectivity and the Quest for Brain Health: Interweaving Critical Phenomenology and Feminist Technoscience Studies in Critical Medical Humanities, I analyze material-discursive, philosophical and existential aspects of early testing for MCI, Alzheimer’s disease and different kinds of dementias, with a focus on discourses, practices, and lived experiences of undergoing such testing.

Research projects

Previous research projects

Teaching

My teaching experience encompasses courses and lectures at undergraduate, master’s, and postgraduate levels within the areas of ethics in health care, biomedical ethics, global health, gender studies and health, gender and medicine, theoretical perspectives of humanistic and social science health research, and qualitative and philosophical methodology, as some examples. I have given introductory lectures in ethics in health care for 300 students at the medical faculty and led interdisciplinary small group conversations and taught at several different formats in between these two.

At the PhD student level, I teach at the course Interdisciplinarity: Medical Humanities and Research at the intersections of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, Clinical Practice and Biomedicine and at the course Engaging with Normativity: Normative Embodiment and Normativity in Medical/Technological Knowledge Practices and Policy-Work.

News

headshot of two female researchers.

Post-COVID syndrome made researchers combine different perspectives

In a large research project, researchers are working across disciplines to understand post-COVID from several different aspects. At the same time, they are researching the interdisciplinary process itself.

Sofia Morberg Jämterud looking exited during her lecture.

Scientific salon about the consequences of the pandemic

The pandemic created and continues to create challenges of existential and social nature as well as in care and medical setting. Such challenges occur on local, national, and global levels. The pandemic has also resulted in unexpected collaborations.

A pair of glasses in front of the part of the exhibition that shows a survey about, for example, how many bathrooms a student has.

Collaborations between medicine, social sciences and humanities at Futures Ahead conference

“Futures Ahead” strengthened the medical humanities both nationally and internationally. The conference proved the great potential and importance of the field, as well as the vibrant engagement in it.

Organisation