I studied African Studies at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and Leiden. I obtained my PhD as a member of the research group ‘Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast’ at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale (Germany) for which I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Liberia. More recently I have conducted qualitative research on HIV in the Netherlands. My research interests include the experience of social change in particular in relation to crises, dynamics of integration, questions of secrecy and disclosure, and of chronicity and normality in relation to HIV.