Els van Dongen †

Els van Dongen (1946-2009) studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Utrecht, where she graduated cum laude and also obtained her PhD degree (1994). She held positions at the University of Utrecht, NWO, Emerson College Boston (European centre) and the University of Amsterdam and has been guest lecturer and professor in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, South Africa and Spain.

Els van Dongen was an assistant professor at the department of anthropology and sociology, University of Amsterdam. Her research was in the field of chronic illness, mental health, health and immigrants, refugees and elderly. She worked in Europe and South Africa. Her main interests were social memory, trauma and violence (Africa) and immigrants/refugees, health and exclusion (Europe) and she was involved in several projects with these subjects. She was editor of Medische Antropologie, the series Health, Culture and Society and member of the editorial board of Anthropology and Medicine and AM Revista della Societa Italiana di Antropologia Medica. She was chair of the European network Medical Anthropology at Home. She was a member of the Ethical Review Board of Doctors without Borders, the advise council of Mikado (knowledge centre of mental health care for immigrants), scientific director of the EU project Partners in Health and member of the “Stuurgroep TMF” of the ministry of foreign affairs.

She has edited several books and special issues of journals and published several books and numerous articles on mental health, elderly, chronic illness, memory and violence.
In 2004 Routledge published a revised and translated version of her PhD thesis, "Worlds of psychotic people." In 2005 she published together with Sylvie Fainzang a volume on Lying and Illness (Spinhuis). She worked on theories of medical anthropology in Latin America and Southern Europe with a grant of NWO. She teached theory and practice in the master Medical Anthropology and Sociology, mental health and anthropology in the Bachelors Anthropology and Ethnographies of Health in the AMMA.

Website: www.elsvandongen.nl