Contingency, Culture & Oncology

Research line Contingency, Culture & Oncology (CCO)

In the research line ‘Contingency, Culture & Oncology’, affiliated to the department of Medical Oncology (Amsterdam UMC), we aim to investigate how cancer patients make meaning of their disease and treatment. We anticipate that arts and culture are crucial elements in meaning making processes in patients as they provide resources and are crucial building blocks for the reconfiguration of personal identity beyond diagnosis (incurable) cancer.

Central to our research line is the notion of ‘contingency’, understood as the experience of something befalling you in life that could have been otherwise. Contingency experiences may evolve into autobiographical disruptions and the inability of patients to live a meaningful life – of not being able to connect actions of the past with the role as a ‘patient’ in the present, nor with desires and goals for the future. A contingency experience, on the other hand, may also be source of creativity and for new possibilities for action. Our aim is to assist patients, who are in danger of identity shifts or even a loss of identity at large, in re-make meaning in life by exploring answers to existential questions (e.g., ‘why me?’, ‘who am I now’) and to re-write their life-stories.

We facilitate this need by (1) more descriptive research into how patients, in the setting of their everyday lives , make meaning of their disease through social interaction and interaction with art and culture; and (2) by setting up participatory arts-based intervention studies . The central question, here, is how we could design an ‘artistic landscape’ for diverse groups of patients (diversified by tumor type and sociodemographic variables including gender, age and socio-economic status) that affords (and not constrains) patients in re-making meaning in life and reconfiguring their personal identities. Ultimately, our aim is to improve quality of life of patients living-with and beyond cancer.