Meet the Team
This is the core research team of the Sensory-based Learning Comenius project. We are all passionate about teaching, the senses and learning. If you want to meet more sensory-based learning like-minded people please check the sensory network page. If you want to join the sensory network. Get in touch!
Emilie Sitzia has a passion for art, chocolate, theories and teaching. She is currently trying to figure out how to merge all of this in one project.
She is a Professor by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam (Fiep Westendorp Foundation) and an Associate Professor at Maastricht University. She teaches and researches 19th and 20th century art and literature, illustration history, museum studies, cultural education, curatorship and interdisciplinary research methods
Anna Harris
Researcher
Anna Harris first worked as a doctor in Australia and the UK before learning anthropology and turning her ethnographic gaze back to the medical profession. Missing the hands-on element of clinical practice in academia, her work endeavours to find creative and practically engaging methods for studying questions of craft, embodiment and sensory learning, mostly in medicine. She is an Associate Professor at Maastricht University and PI of the European Research Council funded project Making Clinical Sense. Her most recent book A Sensory Education, is available for free Open Access.
Ilse van Lieshout
Researcher
Ilse van Lieshout (1981) is since 5 years the head of the art education department at the cultural presentation institute Marres, house for contemporary culture. She is trained as an art teacher, artist and art therapist and educational scientist. Worked in diverse educational projects in Maastricht combining music, dance and art in multidisciplinary workshops. As an art therapist she helped diverse age groups trough art processes for wellbeing. From young children with autism to adults suffering from brain damage, or early stages of dementia. Overall she is aiming to train the senses through art in education and everyday life.
Joost Dijkstra
Educationalist
Joost is trained as educationalist and specialized in programmatic student assessment and quality assurance of education. Since 2019 Joost is working as Head of the Cluster Educational Development and Policy (EDaP). The cluster supports the Faculty Board in developing policy on topics related to education, assessment, quality assurance, teacher professionalization, and more. EDaP also support teaching staff in developing education, by offering broad educational expertise, as well as contributing to optimizing the organization of education and learning.
Elene Kadagidze
Researcher
Elene Kadagidze is a researcher, art historian, and an aspiring educator. She has always been fascinated with the way we embody the spaces we’re in, the way our senses are developed over time, and how they’re more involved in our lives than we give them credit for.
With her Bachelor’s in Art History and Theory, and Master’s in Arts and Heritage, she strives to look at the senses and how they are interwoven in the fields of art and education, and how they both benefit from the involvement of the senses in their practice.