Ms N. (Natashe) Lemos Dekker

Thesis working title: Dementia and the politics of care at the end of life

Natashe Lemos Dekker is a PhD candidate at the medical anthropology department at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on social processes and the management of death and dying with dementia. She scrutinizes the notion of social death and critically assesses the politics of death and dying by questioning normative conditions for the production of lives worth living.

Through ethnographic fieldwork in nursing homes in the Netherlands, she addresses how notions of a good death relate to end of life decision making and the provision of long term care for people with dementia. In doing so she explores anticipation of the end of life and experiences of grief and loss. Within this research project, and specific to the Dutch context, she addresses the challenges and motivations for euthanasia in the case of dementia, and implementations of the palliative care tool Zorgpad Stervensfase (a Dutch version of the Liverpool Care Pathway) in a nursing home setting.

Previously, she has conducted field research in Buenos Aires, Argentina on bereavement and political action among women who have lost family members during the dictatorship.

She holds an MA in gender and ethnicity studies and an MA in cultural anthropology, both from Utrecht University.

KEY WORDS: Death and Dying, Dementia, Ageing, Grief, Social Death, Palliative Care, Normativity, Anticipation and Euthanasia