Louis van den Hengel

Profile

I am a transdisciplinary scholar whose work brings care ethics into conversation with contemporary art, performance, gender and queer studies, and the environmental humanities. My research asks how artistic practices can help us imagine and cultivate more just, caring, and livable worlds.

At the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, I hold the position of Associate Professor of Care Ethics & the Arts and serve 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 teaching and supervision span care ethics and aesthetics, cultural analysis, feminist and queer theory, gender and diversity studies, and ecological approaches to culture and the arts.

Before joining the University of Humanistic Studies, I was Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Maastricht University. I hold an MA in Classics and a PhD in Gender Studies, both awarded cum laude by Radboud University Nijmegen. My international experience includes a visiting scholarship at New York University and several research residencies at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. In January 2025, I served as lead organizer and curator of the international Care Ethics Research Consortium conference Care, Aesthetics, and Repair, which brought together more than 500 scholars, artists, and makers, including over 230 speakers, to explore the intersections of care ethics and the arts.

My research examines the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of contemporary performance and live art through feminist, queer, trans*, decolonial, and ecological perspectives. I am particularly interested in how performance by minoritized artists can challenge intersecting systems of oppression, generate counterpublic spaces, and cultivate affirmative and relational forms of care. My current book project, Radical Worlding: Performance and the Ethics of Decreation, develops these questions in dialogue with the philosophical and mystical thought of Simone Weil. In addition, I am co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Artistic Care (Oxford University Press, 2028).