Hanne Bakelants
Hanne Bakelants is a doctoral researcher in Social Health Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of a ‘Compassionate University’. Through action research and a developmental evaluation approach she examines the processes and underlying mechanisms of change and aims to identify the opportunities, barriers, and potential for scale up and spread. Before starting her PhD, she studied Educational Sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven (2019) and obtained a master’s degree in Globalisation and Development Studies at the University of Maastricht (2020).
Liesbeth De Donder
Liesbeth De Donder is Professor Adult Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel where she teaches the course “Civil Society and Community Development” and three courses on “Research Methodology”. Her research focuses on social participation and inclusion of older adults, active caring communities, with a particular interest in participatory methodologies (peer-research, co-construction and action research). She is promotor of the Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise and coordinates the research line “Community Development and Change” in the research group Belgian Ageing Studies.
Patty Doran
Patty Doran is a Research Associate in the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group, affiliated with the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMI) and the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA). Current work is primarily on the Ageing in Place in Cities project, a five-year research project that brings together two of the most important social changes of our time: population ageing and urbanisation. Research interests centre on health, inequalities, social justice and the life course and using mixed methods to address complex research questions.
Max Kleijberg is a designer and postdoctoral researcher with a doctoral degree in medical science from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. He also works as regional expert in cancer care equity at the Regional Cancer Centre Stockholm-Gotland. His research takes a transdisciplinary approach to issues related to health equity, aging, severe illness, and the end-of-life. Through participatory action research he partners with community stakeholders to collaboratively develop knowledge and create meaningful change. His ongoing research addresses cancer disparities among ethnically diverse people in Sweden, and health equity for LGBTQ+ people in relation to aging, severe illness and the end-of-life.
Anne van Driessche
Anne van Driessche has a background in Public Health. She followed the master’s programmes Health Education and Promotion and Global Health at Maastricht University. She worked on several research projects within preventive child healthcare at the Municipal Health Service Zeeland in the Netherlands for two years before starting her doctorate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in social health sciences in September 2018 on the theme pediatric advance care planning.
More information will follow soon!
Questions?
Please contact: endoflifecare@vub.be
Joachim Cohen
Prof. Joachim Cohen is a social health scientist and a professor of the End-of-Life Care Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
In the research group he is chairing a research program public health and palliative care.
He graduated in 2001 as a Master in Sociology and in 2007 as a PhD in Social Health Sciences.
His research has been awarded with the Kubler Ross Award for Young Researchers and the Young Investigator Award from the European Association of Palliative Care 2010. Both prizes were awarded to him, mainly because of his large-scale population-based and population-level cross-national research on end-of-life care.
Prof. Cohen has published over 150 articles in international peer reviewed journals, co-edited the Oxford University Press book: “A public health perspective on end of life care”.
Marijke Dheedene
Marijke Dheedene joined the End-of-Life Care Research Group in September 2020 as coordinator communication and valorisation. Before, she worked in various communication roles at private companies and in public organisations. She obtained two professional bachelors, secondary school teacher (Dutch, geography and history) and journalism at Artevelde Hogeschool Ghent, and a master in political science, at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
Agnes van der Heide
Agnes van der Heide is professor in End-of-life care and decision making at the department of Public Health of Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She was trained as a medical doctor and epidemiologist and has been involved in research on the field of end-of-life care and decision making since 1995. She is interested in public health, clinical and ethical aspects. Topics she has been studying include physician-assistance in dying and other end-of-life decisions, shared decision making and advance care planning, and organisation of palliative care. She has performed qualitative and quantitative studies on the local, national and international level.
Carol Tishelman
Carol Tishelman was born, bred and educated as a RN in the US, but has lived in Sweden for most of her life. She is Professor in Innovative Care, working at the juncture of health and social care. This is a joint position, located at Karolinska Institutet’s Dept of Learning, Informatics, Ethics and Management, and at Stockholm Health Care Services, which is responsible for all regional health care outside of acute care hospitals. She is also Guest Professor at the End-of-Life Research Group at VUB. Carol has conducted research in palliative care for several decades, and has led the national competitively-funded DöBra research program in Sweden, aimed at integrating palliative care, public health and health promotion, since 2014. She became interested in the field of public health palliative care through her affiliation with LaTrobe University in Victoria Australia from 2004-2013.
Emma Woodhouse
Emma holds the position of Community Action Programme Manager at St Christopher’s Hospice in South London, partnering and collaborating with communities to find ways to respond to societal need and create change.
Emma graduated in 2017 with a degree in English Language and Literature, and has subsequently worked in learning and participation roles, including as Learning Projects Coordinator at Shakespeare’s Globe, co-designing and producing school and community projects.
Emma’s interests lie in community development, learning and participation, and the power of the arts as instruments for social change.