Inge Blockmans

I am fascinated by the ways in which people deal with “being different”. At an academic level, I study communication barriers and facilitators between people with different physical abilities (interability interaction) alongside social in- and exclusion, identity and well-being. Thereby I draw on my background in linguistics (UAntwerpen, Belgium) and social psychology (University of Surrey, UK). Currently I focus on how women (with spinal cord injury) perceive the attitudes of their environment towards sexuality, relationships and disability, and how these experiences affect their well-being. I do this as a joint PhD candidate at the Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogical Sciences at Ghent University (supervised by Prof. Dr. G. Van Hove) and the Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies at the KU Leuven (supervised by Prof. Dr. P. Enzlin) with the support of an FWO PhD fellowship. As a VOCATIO-laureate (promotion year 2013) I also try to reach a broader audience by sharing my qualitative research and my own life stories in easily accessible ways such as lectures, class discussions, non-academic writing, etc.

A complete list of publications and contact information can be found here.