Carla Besora Barti is a doctoral researcher at Ghent University and the University of Amsterdam. Within the LiLI project, she takes an interdisciplinary approach that brings together art and anthropology, informed by her background in visual arts. She focuses on the concept of pleasure to explore older women’s engagement in intimacy work, both as professionals and as participants or clients. After training in the arts in Barcelona and Ghent, she obtained a interuniversity MA in Gender and Diversity (2021) organized by the five Dutch speaking Belgian universities. She is particularly interested in exploring the intertwinements of the poetic and the political in the realms of gender, sexuality, religion/spirituality and visual culture.

For more information on her research and publications: research.flw.ugent.be

Katrien De Graeve is a feminist researcher and associate professor in Gender Studies at the University of Ghent. As the principal investigator (PI), she coordinates the LiLI project. Her work has consistently focused on inequalities in the personal spheres of life. Trained in sociolinguistics and anthropology, she uses ethnographic research and discourse analytic methodologies to study the role of power in shaping intimacies. After meandering through various topics, from transnational adoptive parenting practices to non-monogamous intimate relationships, the fields of sexuality and ageing studies became an increasingly intriguing research topic. Moreover, having turned fifty in 2020, she became more sensitive to ageism also on a personal level.

For more information on my research and publications: see research.flw.ugent.be

Gabriëlle de Pooter is a doctoral researcher in the LiLI project. Applying social geography and feminist new materialism, she examines how space and place affect the experience of gender, sexuality, and aging. She explores how people who mostly act within the norm do sometimes deviate from the norm. She completed a BA at University College Roosevelt (Middelburg) and a MA in Contemporary Art at Manchester University (via Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York). After eight years of professional experience in the cultural heritage industry, she graduated from the interuniversity MA program in Gender and Diversity (Belgium, Dutch speaking universities), with a thesis on the politics of abortion rituals, applying a feminist new materialist lens.

For more information on her research and publications: see research.flw.ugent.be

Sara De Vuyst covers the cultural studies component within the LiLI project. She decided to focus on queer representations of ageing women and how they disrupt normative ideas on older women’s intimate desires. While exploring the meaning of these unruly messages, and their production process and use, her aim is to construct, together with older queer women, alternative narratives on ageing and sexuality to the ones currently prevailing. She has a passion for feminist and queer media studies and obtained a PhD in Communication Studies at Ghent University in 2016, with a thesis that focused on gender issues in journalism. From 2017 to 2020, she continued this research with a postdoc study on intersectional aspects of online harassment in journalism.

For more information on her research and publications: see research.flw.ugent.be

Nika Looman is a cultural anthropologist doing their PhD within the LiLI project. They take a feminist anthropological approach on later-in-life sexuality and intimacy, with a focus on older (gender)queer women and non-binary people. They are interested in topics related to sexuality and intimacy such as (online) dating, (new) relationships, non-normative relationships and sexual practices. By centralizing the stories and experiences of queer women and non-binary individuals, they aim to challenge and redefine dominant heteronormative narratives of ageing. Nika studied at Radboud University Nijmegen. Their interest in sexuality and gender studies culminated into a MA thesis (2018) on genderqueer and non-binary people in the Netherlands.

For more information on their research and publications: see research.flw.ugent.be

Giulia Nazzaro joined the LiLI project as a postdoctoral researcher to facilitate the co-creation of a new theory of later-in-life sex and intimacy. She finds the conceptual exploration of “unruliness” particularly fascinating, especially its practices, embodiments and expressions in relation to space, place, art and materiality. In her previous research, she has consistently explored the relationship between forms of activism and gender and sexuality via visual ethnographic methods in diverse contexts, such as the USA and Australia. For the LiLI project, she continues using similar methodologies to conduct fieldwork in the francophone communities in Belgium, and Brussels in particular, to investigate alternative urban spaces of habitation and their connection with later-in-life desire and intimacy. Finally, within LiLI, Giulia co-supervises Gabriëlle de Pooter’s PhD.

For more information on their research and publications: see research.flw.ugent.be