I am a futures-anthropologist, having obtained my PhD (cum laude) at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research in 2014. Since then, I have conducted anthropological fieldwork all over the world, from Inuit communities in Greenland, to Jakartan riversettlements and European hospitals. I am currently working as a researcher and lecturer at the Anthropology department (University of Amsterdam). 

My work focuses upon what I call sustainable humanity: how do we stay humane, in times of datification and technologization? In particular, I study the ways in which humans and alghorythms increasingly work together and make decisions, creating new inequalities and perspectives in global society. In doing so, I am always interested in creating innovative methodologies.

Furthermore, I am motivated to make my research as accessible as possible for readers from a wide range of backgrounds, by combining academic writing with deep journalism, the latter being published in books, newspapers and opinionmagazines. My academic books have been published internationally, by Routledge, HarperCollins and Polity. My articles have appeared in journals such as Third Quarterly, Journal of Future Robot Life, Disaster Prevention and Management, Urban Forum and Politics and Governance. 

I am currently the Principal Investigator of the ERC-grant awarded project ‘Health-AI’. I also serve as an the President of the Dutch Future Society, an organization for professional future-foresighters. 

I have developed several University-courses for Bachelor and Masterstudents, as well as for non-academic professionals. Recent examples are ‘When Disasters meet Conflict’ (free available on Coursera), and Sustainable Humanity (UvA). I currently teach the BA- and MA-courses Practicing Etnography and Writing Applied Etnography. Besides, I supervise bachelors, master and PHD students while writing their theses.

Keywords & research expertise

• Anthropology
• Anthropology of data
• Articifical Intelligence
• Fair AI
• Future-foresighting

Administrative roles

President/Chair of the Dutch Future Society

Research methods

• Etnography
• Participant observation
• Deep fieldwork
• Digital anthropology
• Delphi-surveys
• Future-in-the now research

Current research projects

If people hear about ‘alghorytmic decisionmaking’, they typically think of a computer system and the data sets itcalculates. In reality, all alghorytmic decisions are made in collaboration with humans: it is us, who create them, evaluate them, follow theiroutcomes or deviate from them. My project is an anthropological study of the collaboration between humans and alghorytmic systems, in the field of global public health – a field where the growth in datafication and automation is unprecedented. In six country cases, the researchers of this project will look at how doctors, programmers and algorithms make decisions together, for example in the field of DNA genetic research, or preventive health care.

Research grants & honours

• Van Voorst, R. (2022). ERC-Starting grant for study on the future of public health: Health-AI
• van Voorst, R. (2021). Researchgrant ACES for study on digital health care.
• van Voorst, R. (2021). Researchgrant Catharina van Tussenbroekfonds.
• van Voorst, R. (2010). LOVA/Marjan Rens Thesis Award
   

Overview courses

• Practicing Etnography
• Writing Applied Anthropology
• Bootcamp Etnography and Design
• (Research) Master thesis supervision

Phd Supervision

TBA: the Health-Ai project is currently hiring 2 PhDs and 1 Postdoc; all researchers will be cosupervised by Roanne