Brigitte Adriaensen

Brigitte Adriaensen (PhD, 2005, KULeuven) is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. She is also a Professor of Literary Studies at the Open University of the Netherlands. She was PI of the research program ‘The Politics of Irony in Contemporary Latin American Literature on Violence’, for which she was awarded a Vidi Grant by NWO (2011-16). Her publications are situated in the fields of humor studies, violence studies and ecocriticism, and she has supervised many PhD theses in those fields. Currently, she is developing different new projects related to humor and the law (with Andrew Bricker, Alberto Godioli and Ted Laros) and environmental humanities (with Marieke Winkler and Marjolein van Herten). She was recently awarded a NWO Vici grant for the project ‘Poison, Medicine or Magic Potion? Shifting Perspectives on Drugs in Latin America (1820-2020)’ which will be carried out from 2022-2027. In this project, she will analyse literary and ethnographic texts to explore shifting perceptions of ayahuasca, peyote and coca(ine) in the Latin American context. The team will use oral history and fieldwork methods as well to understand the changing perceptions of these psychoactive substances from an Indigenous perspective, in relation to discussions on cultural heritage and tourism.