Louis van den Hengel

Profile

I am a transdisciplinary scholar exploring the role of contemporary art in fostering a just and caring society. Since 2023, I work at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, as Associate Professor of Care Ethics & the Arts and, since September 2024, also as Head of the Department of Care Ethics. I teach in the MA Care Ethics and Policy and supervise PhD research, including artistic research conducted in collaboration with HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. My areas of supervision and teaching include care ethics and aesthetics, cultural analysis, feminist and queer theory, gender and diversity studies, and the environmental humanities. 

Previously, I was Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. I hold an MA in Classics and a PhD in Gender Studies, both awarded cum laude by Radboud University Nijmegen. Internationally, I have been a Visiting Scholar at New York University and have held several research residencies at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome.

My research examines the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of contemporary performance and live art through feminist, queer, trans*, decolonial, and ecological perspectives. I explore how performances, particularly by minoritized artists—women and/or queer and trans* persons, specifically those of colour and Indigenous people, as well as a range of nonhuman “others”—can challenge intersecting systems of oppression, create new counterpublic spheres, and foster an affirmative, relational ethics of care. My current book project, Radical Worlding: Performance and the Ethics of Decreation, brings these concerns into dialogue with the philosophical and mystical thought of Simone Weil.

Recent publications include an essay on queer ecopoetics in the journal Textual Practice (2023), a co-authored contribution to the book Interspecies Performance (Performance Research Books, 2024), and a chapter on Marina Abramovic in the book Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture (Routledge, 2026). Forthcoming work includes an article in Humanimalia (2026) developing the concept of “trans*species care ethics,” based on an artistic research project. I am also co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Artistic Care (Oxford University Press, 2027).

In January 2025, I was the lead organiser and curator of the international conference of the Care Ethics Research Consortium on Care, Aesthetics, and Repair. The conference brought together more than 500 scholars, artists, and makers, including 230+ speakers, to explore the intersections of care ethics and the arts (see here and here).