Iris van der Tuin is professor in Theory of Cultural Inquiry at Utrecht University (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies). She is also Utrecht University Dean of Interdisciplinary Education and vice-dean for undergraduate education in the Faculty of Humanities.

Her research is part of the group Transmission in Motion of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry. Iris coordinates the Special Interest Group 'AI in Cultural Inquiry and Art.' Together with Nanna Verhoeff she has initiated the development of the Creative Humanities Academy for Continuing Education.

Together with colleagues from the Netherlands and abroad, Iris founded the Susanne K. Langer Circle in 2020. In 2022 she initiated the article collection ‘Practice-Based Research of Interdisciplinary Higher Education’ for the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications of Springer Nature with Ida Kemp, Catherine Lyall, and Simon Scott.

Trained as a feminist epistemologist and working as an interdisciplinarian, she works at the intersection of philosophies of science and the humanities (including science and technology studies), cultural theory, and critical and creative practices of cultural inquiry. These fields meet in humanities scholarship that traverses the 'two cultures’ and reaches beyond the boundaries of academia out to the field of art and culture. Iris is interested in the new and interdisciplinary humanities and in practice-based research of interdisciplinary teaching and learning in Higher Education.

She co-authored New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies (Open Humanities Press, 2012) with Rick Dolphijn, wrote Generational Feminism: New Materialist Introduction to a Generative Approach (Lexington Books, 2015) and edited Nature for Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender (Macmillan Reference USA, 2016) as well as, for example, and with A.J. Nocek, the special journal issue ‘New Concepts for Materialism’ of Philosophy Today (2019). Iris chaired the COST Action New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter comes to Matter’ (2014-18) and worked in the H2020 project Ethics of Coding: A Report on the Algorithmic Condition (2017, chaired by Felicity Colman). Iris is founding editor with Rosi Braidotti of the book series New Materialisms of Edinburgh University Press. She is editor of Somatechnics with Holly Randell-Moon until the end of 2022. Iris serves on several editorial boards and is a member of the advisory board of ECOLAS, the consortium of European Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Until February 1, 2018 Iris was associate professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies). She coordinnated the interdisciplinary bachelor programme Liberal Arts and Sciences from August 1, 2015 until February 1, 2021. Prior to that, she was associate professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy of Science in the Department of Media and Culture Studies where she coordinated the research master’s programme Gender & Ethnicity. In 2011-12 she was a visiting scholar in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, USA, working on the project The Material Turn in the Humanities with an NWO Veni grant. In 2020 she was, together with Nanna Verhoeff, guest professor at the chair Architectural Theory and Philosophy of Technics (ATTP) of TU Wien. In 2021-22 she is Novo Nordisk guest professor in the Laboratory for Art Research of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and in the School of Communication and Culture (Aesthetics and Culture) of Aarhus Universitet. Iris was vice dean for BA education in the Faculty of Humanities in the academic years 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Chair
Theory of Cultural Inquiry
Inaugural lecture date
06.12.2018