Chia Longman
Motivation
What is your main driver for doing research?
I am generally intellectually curious about human reproduction, behaviour and relations over time and place in relation to social inequalities, in particular gender inequality. Understanding the world better in a deep and non-trivial and communicating that understanding might hopefully also help to somehow make it it bit better.
Why do you believe that strengthening mental health is so important?
Mental health issues are among the greatest well-being challenges of this century, even in so-called developed and affluent West. My interest is the way they also be appear to be tied to more existential, cultural and socio-political questions beyond the individual.
How could research change the world?
Research as such cannot change the world, but the way it is controlled, supported, communicated, introduced and applied into broader society can. The role of academic freedom and university education, including in the humanities and social sciences, to equip future generations with analytical and critical minds, is crucial.
With whom outside academia did you already collaborate and achieved important results?
As an ethnographer my research is intrinsically intersubjective and involves exchanging with my interlocutors. Our research group also actively collaborates with various civil society organizations, government applied projects, etc., predominantly related to women’s and LGBTQI rights and ethnic and racial equality.
Publications
https://biblio.ugent.be/person/801001185982