ERASMUS UNIVERSITY – Final Symposium

Keynote lecture by dr. Niels van Poecke
Talk - Wed 1 June 2022
WORM Rotterdam
WORM Central Station
Start → 13:00
End → 15:30

On Wednesday June 1st, the department of Arts and Culture Studies, in collaboration with WORM, will organise a mini-symposium to celebrate the completion of the research projects conducted by the group of Honours students from the academic year 2021-2022.

Students will present the final results of their research projects:
– Gender in the arts and culture (coordinated by Laura Braden)
– Signaling in the creative industries (coordinated by Daniel Kaimann)
– Retromania revisited. On the use of the past in pop music (coordinated by Dorus Hoebink)
This will be followed by a keynote lecture by Niels van Poecke titled The Added Value of (Pop) Culture in Oncological Care. See abstract below.

When? Wednesday June 1st
Time? 14.00 – 15.15 CET (doors open at 12.30, drinks afterwards in the Wunderbar)
Where? WORM (Boomgaardsstraat 71, Rotterdam).
How? The event is free, but registration is required. Please send an email to Dorus Hoebink (hoebink@eshcc.eur.nl) with the header ‘registration HP symposium’.

Programme:
13:00 – 13:45: student presentations + Q&A
13:45 – 14:00: break
14:00 – 14:45: keynote lecture by dr. Niels van Poecke
14:45-15:15: Q&A/discussion (Drinks will take place afterwards in the Wunderbar.)

The Added Value of (Pop) Culture in Oncological Care
In his lecture, Niels van Poecke will explain why it makes a lot of sense to work as an arts and culture scholar at a department of medical oncology. When diagnosed with (incurable) cancer, people’s life lines and life stories are suddenly disrupted, which may result in an existential life crisis ending in a loss of identity. It is anticipated, however, that when people manage to give their life new meaning and purpose, that they may end up integrating the experience of crisis into the evolving life-story, reconstructing some kind of narrative whole. Whether – and if so – how patients achieve some kind of narrative integration, and how they could be assisted by oncological caregivers, is an underresearched question – which will be explored throughout this lecture.

About Niels van Poecke
Niels van Poecke has worked at the department of Arts and Culture studies (ESHCC) for ten years. Maybe you know him – through his courses on Kant’s aesthetic theory, his role as coordinator of the Rotterdam Arts & Sciences Lab (RASL) or… his involvement in the ACS Honors Program. Currently, he works at Amsterdam University Medical Centers, at the department of Medical Oncology. Yes, you have read it well: the department of Medical Oncology, where he now introduces himself to colleagues as “the odd one out”, the scholar doing research on the role and significance of the arts in oncological care. But why?