Annemarie Mol (born 13 September 1958) is a Dutch ethnographer and

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. She is the Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

. Winner of the Constantijn & Christiaan Huijgens Grant from the NWO in 1990 to study 'Differences in Medicine', she was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2010 to study 'The Eating Body in Western Practice and Theory'. She has helped to develop post-

ANT Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cre ...

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

understandings of science, technology and medicine. In her earlier work she explored the performativity of health care practices, argued that realities are generated within those practices, and noted that since practices differ, so too do realities. The body, as she expressed it, is multiple: it is more than one but it is also less than many (since the different versions of the body also overlap in health care practices). This is an empirical argument about

ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...

(which is the branch of philosophy that explores being, existence, or the categories of being.) As a part of this she also developed the notion of 'ontological politics', arguing that since realities or the conditions of possibility vary between practices, this means that they are not given but might be changed. Mol has been member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

since 2013. Mol has written and worked with a range of scholars including John Law. In a recent talk, Mol relates the concept of globalization to the interconnections of nature.

Prizes

In 2004 she received the

Ludwik Fleck Prize The Ludwik Fleck Prize is an annual award given for a book in the field of science and technology studies. It was created by the 4S Council (Society for the Social Studies of Science) in 1992 and is named after microbiologist Ludwik Fleck. The pr ...

(

Society for Social Studies of Science The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is a non-profit scholarly association devoted to the social studies of science and technology (STS). It was founded in 1975 and it has grown considerably over the years. In 2024, over 3,000 people ...

, 4S) for her book ''The Body Multiple''. In 2012 she was awarded the Spinoza Prize.

Publications

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Lectures

* Mol, Annemarie (2013); Alexander von Humboldt Lecture: What Methods Do.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mol, Annemarie 1958 births Living people Dutch ethnographers 21st-century Dutch philosophers People from Landgraaf Actor-network theory Dutch women philosophers Ontologists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Spinoza Prize winners Science and technology studies scholars Dutch women anthropologists Philosophers of technology