Professor Hanneke van Laarhoven is professor of translational medical oncology at the University of Amsterdam and head of the Department of Medical Oncology of the Amsterdam University Medical Center. She is a world-renowned specialist on gastrointestinal cancer, but her interests reach far beyond the body, including psychology, AI, philosophy and theology. She is also known for helping develop the first large-scale databases collecting tumour and blood samples, archives which hopefully will one day provide a key to unlocking the mysteries still surrounding the disease today.
Van Laarhoven calls herself a “staunch advocate of interdisciplinarity”. She certainly has the credentials to back it up: she has PhDs in both Medical Oncology and Religious Studies, and has long been involved with spiritual and artistic projects. Not the most obviously related disciplines, you might say, but it has offered her a uniquely important position from which to understand the concerns of her patients, many of whom find themselves unexpectedly faced with questions of uncertainty, and, indeed, mortality.
Faculty page: https://researchinformation.amsterdamumc.org/en/persons/hanneke-w-m-van-laarhoven
European Society for Medical Oncology page: https://www.esmo.org/about-esmo/biographies/hanneke-van-laarhoven
The Cluster F Theory Podcast is edited by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada.
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11. Contingency- Hanneke van Laarhoven