Marieke van Eijk

Marieke van Eijk is conducting a PhD project at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR). In this project she focuses on medical care practices for people who struggle to conform to prevailing social norms of masculinity and femininity or who alter the sexed body into a different gender, expressing a 'transgender' identification. By focusing on transgender healthcare in Western Europe and the United States, her project seeks to explore how different structural conditions provide different medical practices and diverse physicalities for transgender people. The research aims to contribute to our understanding of the relationships among contemporary biomedicine, ideology, healthcare policies and the body.

This research endeavour is grounded in the research findings of two MA theses, both of which she completed cum laude. Marieke van Eijk studied gender studies at the department of political science and religion studies at the faculty of humanities at the University of Amsterdam. Her teaching and research interests include the study of transgender issues, health and the body, gender and sexuality in contemporary society, and anthropological and feminist theories.