Tineke Kleinhout-Vliek’s research and interests lie in critical pharmaceutical studies, focusing on medicine availability & access and patient engagement & activism. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher on Social Pharmaceutical Innovation for Unmet Medical Needs (SPIN). In this collaborative research project, the Dutch team and their colleagues in Brazil, Canada and France investigate SPIN initiatives through interviewing and document analysis. These SPIN initiatives comprise new, collaborative ways to address the well-known problems in the pharmaceutical field around the availability, accessibility, and affordability of treatments.

Originally trained in biomedical research (BSc and MSc Molecular Life Sciences, Wageningen University & Research, an internship at the University of Edinburgh), Tineke really found her groove during three months’ fieldwork in India for her second MSc (Development & Rural Innovation, Wageningen University & Research, with distinction). Here, she researched how India managed to get rid of the patent on an expensive leukaemia medicine despite international patenting legislation indicating otherwise.

Tineke's PhD dissertation (Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2020) examined how policymakers decide what forms of health care should, and should not, be reimbursed through Dutch collective health care insurance. She looked in particular at the societal weighing phase of such decisions using insights from Science and Technology Studies literature.

Tineke is fascinated by novel ideas and always enjoys discussing them, whether over a cup of coffee or in front of a lecture hall. She lives in The Hague with her husband and their two wee girls.