Hi, I’m Stephanie

I’m a scholar-artist working at the intersection of critical theory, feminist and queer philosophy, psychoanalysis and arts-based research. My work rethinks subjectivity, sexuality and sociality through tenderness, reading Freud critically through feminist, queer and decolonial lenses. I’m Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the School of Social Sciences, Hasselt University, and I’m training as a sexual and relationship therapist at PXL. My brain-computer interface installation Tender Rhythms, which turns brainwave synchrony between two people into sound and image, has been shown in Brussels, Leuven, Hasselt and Atlanta.

I call my work tender activism: it shifts the focus from the individual to the tender relationships between and beyond us. Through writing, teaching, song, performance and EEG-based installations, I critique the colonial, ableist, hetero-patriarchal and neoliberal ideal of an autonomous, invulnerable self, and propose to rethink subjectivity, sociality and sexuality as tender.

The word comes from Freud’s early ‘hysteric’ patients, who used Zärtlichkeit (tenderness) for a non-phallic kind of desire and subjectivity that Freud went on to cast as infantile and maternal. My RESEARCH reclaims it, drawing on feminist, queer, Black, postcolonial and psychoanalytic theory and affect studies. Tenderness comes from the Proto-Indo-European root -ten, ‘to stretch’, which it shares with words like tone and tune. That is why my ART so often works with sound: interactive installations, soundscapes and lullabies for adults that give voice to the connection between people.

The same mix of theory and art shapes my TEACHING, where students use art to analyse and critique how sex, gender, race and ability are constructed, and often make their own. It also drives my CURATION of events, conferences and workshops that bring artists and scholars together.

I’m happy to give guest lectures and talks, and always open to academic and artistic collaborations. Get in touch.