Overview
My work in this area examines how healthcare professionals collaborate in complex clinical environments and how emerging biotechnologies (from gene editing to HIV cure research) shape practices, decision‑making, and patient experience. Using ethnography, I study the often invisible dimensions of care: the tacit knowledge, emotional labour, negotiations of responsibility, and value conflicts that formal metrics or protocols rarely capture. This approach helps make explicit the lived realities of interdisciplinary teams and supports the co‑creation of more resilient, equitable, and contextually grounded healthcare solutions.
Key Themes
1. Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Healthcare Teams
Across university hospitals in the Netherlands, I work with clinicians, midwives, nurses, and biomedical researchers to understand how decisions are made in fast‑paced, high‑stakes care environments. My research focuses on how professionals in different roles coordinate, navigate hierarchies, and negotiate responsibilities while striving to deliver safe, compassionate care.
2. The Invisible Dimensions of Care
Many aspects of good care—attentiveness, emotional support, shared situational awareness, knowing when not to intervene—are difficult to quantify. Through long-term fieldwork, I document these harder‑to‑measure dimensions of clinical practice and show how they shape patient experience, team culture, and definitions of safety and quality.
This includes work such as the ethnographic investigation of “watchful attendance” in childbirth at Amsterdam UMC.
3. Safety Culture in Clinical Practice
In collaboration with a Dutch university medical centre, I explore how healthcare professionals experience and enact “safety culture” in their daily routines. Rather than treating safety as a checklist, this research reveals how it is actively produced through communication, trust, situated judgement, and interprofessional alignment.
4. Global Health & Biotechnologies
I also work at the interface of social science, biomedicine, and global health, studying how collaborative research projects develop and translate new biomedical interventions—such as integrated strategies toward HIV cure. This work investigates how scientific knowledge travels, how equity is negotiated across African and European research settings, and how emerging biotechnologies generate new forms of partnership, uncertainty, and ethical reflection.
Across university hospitals in the Netherlands, I work with clinicians, midwives, nurses, and biomedical researchers to understand how decisions are made in fast‑paced, high‑stakes care environments. My research focuses on how professionals in different roles coordinate, navigate hierarchies, and negotiate responsibilities while striving to deliver safe, compassionate care.
2. The Invisible Dimensions of Care
Many aspects of good care—attentiveness, emotional support, shared situational awareness, knowing when not to intervene—are difficult to quantify. Through long-term fieldwork, I document these harder‑to‑measure dimensions of clinical practice and show how they shape patient experience, team culture, and definitions of safety and quality.
This includes work such as the ethnographic investigation of “watchful attendance” in childbirth at Amsterdam UMC.
3. Safety Culture in Clinical Practice
In collaboration with a Dutch university medical centre, I explore how healthcare professionals experience and enact “safety culture” in their daily routines. Rather than treating safety as a checklist, this research reveals how it is actively produced through communication, trust, situated judgement, and interprofessional alignment.
4. Global Health & Biotechnologies
I also work at the interface of social science, biomedicine, and global health, studying how collaborative research projects develop and translate new biomedical interventions—such as integrated strategies toward HIV cure. This work investigates how scientific knowledge travels, how equity is negotiated across African and European research settings, and how emerging biotechnologies generate new forms of partnership, uncertainty, and ethical reflection.
Current Projects
SPIRAL: Integrated Interventions to Achieve Durable HIV Control in Diverse Populations (2024-ongoing)
This interdisciplinary project brings together biomedical researchers, clinicians, social scientists, health economists, and communication specialists to co‑develop strategies for an HIV cure that are safe, affordable, and globally accessible. My role focuses on understanding contextual barriers, facilitators, and stakeholder perspectives across diverse research settings.
This interdisciplinary project brings together biomedical researchers, clinicians, social scientists, health economists, and communication specialists to co‑develop strategies for an HIV cure that are safe, affordable, and globally accessible. My role focuses on understanding contextual barriers, facilitators, and stakeholder perspectives across diverse research settings.
Culture in Care: Safety in the Daily Work of Healthcare Professionals (2020-ongoing)
This pilot study documents how interdisciplinary teams in a Dutch university medical centre enact safety in their everyday practice. It explores how values, routines, and hierarchies shape the production of safe care, beyond what official guidelines capture.
This pilot study documents how interdisciplinary teams in a Dutch university medical centre enact safety in their everyday practice. It explores how values, routines, and hierarchies shape the production of safe care, beyond what official guidelines capture.
Watchful Attendance: Midwife Support during Childbirth (2021-ongoing)
In collaboration with Amsterdam UMC, I investigate how midwives provide “watchful attendance,” i.e. the mix of actions, non‑interventions, and tacit judgements that shape labour and delivery. This project highlights forms of care that are vital yet often undervalued in health system metrics.
In collaboration with Amsterdam UMC, I investigate how midwives provide “watchful attendance,” i.e. the mix of actions, non‑interventions, and tacit judgements that shape labour and delivery. This project highlights forms of care that are vital yet often undervalued in health system metrics.
Why This Work Matters
Across these projects, I aim to strengthen how healthcare systems understand and support the human, relational, and contextual dimensions of biomedical and clinical work. By embedding ethnography into real-world lab-based workflows and hospital collaborations, my research contributes to the design of practices and technologies that are more attuned to those who use them, from health professionals to patients, and communities alike.
Photo: Giulia Sinatti, Singapore 2019