About me

Hello! I’m Ties (he/him & pronounced ’tease’), pleased to meet you!

I work as a lecturer, teacher, and researcher in the field of the arts, at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (Maastricht, NL). I’m trained in different disciplines (health sciences, cultural studies, science & technology studies, philosophy), and I have worked in different fields (from academia to community arts and art festivals).

I am interested in ethics and art – more specifically: how art comes to matter in society, and how ethics is involved in artistic practices. The role and place of ethics – what to do and how to live – in our contemporary (Western, affluent) society has changed. Ethical deliberation is no longer limited to academia, special committees, or religious fora (if it ever was). In a society in which we face multiple crises, and where (technological) change is permanent, we desperately need the arts. Its imagination, its critique, its ability to urge us to imagine that ‘it could be otherwise’.

In my research, I especially focus on how we use (socially engaged) art and emerging science and technologies to address questions of what means to do and be good in our contemporary society. I call this encultured ethics. My aim is to show how ethics is constitutive for these practices and to encourage and cultivate a responsive attitude and ethical sensibility among designers, artists, scientists and engineers.

Moving between the loci of academia and the art world, I work as senior reseacher/teacher at the research centre What Art Knows, and at the interdisciplinary arts bachelor iArts (both at the Maastricht Institute of Arts at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences). At the research centre, we are developing cutting edge artistic research – both in theory and in practice.

Prior to this, I worked as a postdoc at the department of Philosophy at Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (Maastricht University), where we explored and designed innovative forms of public participation in the contemporary symphony orchestra in the project Artful Participation.

Since 2020, I am a member (secretary) of the Ethical Committee Research of Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. And since 2021, I teach a course on science, technology and philosophy of happiness at the University of Amsterdam.

Next to my academic work, I like to play bass in the instrumental surf-rock family The Mariños and in the lo-fi garage band WE ARE JOINERS. I live in Eindhoven with my daughter.

For a more detailed CV, please check my LinkedIn profile.