Prof. A. Mol (1958) has been appointed Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

The focus of Annemarie Mol's research is on the foundations of the social sciences. She is especially interested in human corporality and the materiality of existence. What other methods and words could better serve to incorporate these concepts into the formulation of social and socio-material theories? In her book The Body Multiple (Duke University Press, 2002), Mol presents a possible answer: detailed ethnographic research of practices makes it possible to come to an understanding of ‘the body' as an ever-changing ‘actor enacted'. In The Logic of Care (Routledge, 2008), Mol thematises the process of knowing and intervening in bodies. She argues that the eratic, unpredictable nature of bodies means that ‘doctoring' offers greater perspective than 'control', and demonstrates that techniques themselves are also unpredictable.

In a series of articles on metaphors such as ‘network', ‘fluid' and ‘semi-permeable boumndaries', Mol raised the question of the transferability of objects (water pumps, viruses) and practices (measuring, diagnosing). This mainly concerned the geographical transferability from the north of the planet to the south and vice versa. The focus of Mol's research is currently on food. Food is not only biological and social, it is also intimate and global. This is why researching socio-material relationships on the basis of food provides new insights into what links and separates people around the world. And while the term ‘handling' in the Western tradition is especially derived from the literal movement of hands, the question arises what happens if we use ‘eating as the model for what it is to act.

Since 2008, Mol has worked at the UvA as Socrates Professor of Theory, Humanism & Materiality. Before that, she worked from 1996 as Socrates Professor of Political Philosophy and as senior researcher at the University of Twente. She also worked as a postdoc at the University of Maastricht and Utrecht University and as a junior researcher at the University of Groningen. Mol has been a member of the Social Science Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2006. For The Body Multiple Mol received the Ludwig Fleck Prize and the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize. In 2009, the European Research Commission awarded her an ERC Advanced Grant to conduct research into The Eating Body in Western Theory and Practice.