Valerie De Craene is a postdoctoral researcher, working on the LiLI-project (Later-in-Life Intimacy. Women’s unruly practices, spaces and representations). She studied geography at Ghent University and worked as a teaching assistant and doctoral researcher at the Division of Geography and Tourism at KU Leuven and as a researcher on housing at Cosmopolis, Geography Department at VUB. Throughout her research career, Valerie has worked on several applied research projects commissioned by governments and civil society organizations.
As an activist and scholar, Valerie engages in analyzing contemporary politics of science and is an active member of Slow Science in Belgium. She is also a member of AGORA, the Dutch-Flemish magazine for social-spatial matters. Her research interests lie in four broad areas:
- Gender, sexuality, and manifestations of difference and inequality in the organization of space more broadly
- Territoriality of housing, social exclusion in rural and urban landscapes
- The neoliberal university, slow science, political economy of higher education, publish or perish, gender, mental health, …
- Epistemological, methodological and ethical dimensions of doing embodied research in relation to production of knowledges within and beyond academia (rigour, reflexivity, positionality, …)
