The Stories We Tell

This unique anthology brings together creative narratives from researchers across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, revealing how scholarship becomes story.

From historians tracing narratives sedimented over time to philosophers examining the boundaries between nature and culture, from political scientists exploring the power of myths that transcend borders to scholars of the arts celebrating the sparse beauty of language itself, these pages demonstrate that academic enquiry and storytelling are inseparable.

Drawing on the ‘narrative turn’, reshaping fields from social psychology to criminology, this collection speaks to a fundamental human truth: that tales, myths, chronicles and yarns are a language we all share. Whether you’re an academic or simply someone who can’t resist one more chapter before bedtime, these creatively written research accounts invite you into a world where rigorous scholarship meets the timeless art of storytelling.

You can download the book as a PDF or read it online.

The content overview below links directly to the chapters in the online book.

Introduction

Elsje Fourie (ORCID) and Christin Hoene (ORCID)

Trading Solitude // Counter-Intuitive Squared

Johan Adriaensen (ORCID)
Johan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. His research analyses the role of EU institutions in policy-making. Analytically, he focuses particularly on the role of the member states. Empirically, he looks at the EU’s international trade policy. 

Ghana is Different

Sarah Anschütz (ORCID)
Sarah works as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Society Studies. Her research focuses on youth mobility, migration, and transnational engagements between West Africa and Europe, using ethnographic and creative methods. Sarah loves drawing, being outdoors, and sharing good food with friends. 

On Watching Shoes Being Made in Addis Ababa

Elsje Fourie (ORCID)
Elsje studies how cultural commodities and ideas about modernity travel between locales in the Global South and beyond. Her novel manuscript, Under Sleep, asks whether it’s ever too late to undo past mistakes, and questions contemporary clichés of the “strong female character.” It is still looking for a publisher. 

A Very Special Birthday Present

Christin Hoene (ORCID)
Christin works as an Assistant Professor in Literary Studies in the Department of Literature & Art. Her research spans modern and contemporary Anglophone literature, with a particular focus on postcolonial literature, sound studies, word and music studies, and queer theory. Christin enjoys writing, editing, and good food.

Up My Alley

Ferenc Laczó (ORCID)
Ferenc is a political and intellectual historian whose main research interests concern European and global history, political ideas, mass violence, and questions of history and memory. He is the author or editor of twelve books on Hungarian, Jewish, German, European, and global themes. 

A Rijeka Morning

Brigitte Le Normand (ORCID)
Brigitte is an Associate Professor of European History in a Global Context and the director of the Globalisation, Transnationalism, and Development research group. Her research centres on socialist Yugoslavia as a modernisation project, focusing on urban planning, migration, and maritime shipping. She enjoys singing, dancing, and travelling.

Field Encounters of the Third Kind

Valentina Mazzucato (ORCID)
Valentina is Professor of Globalisation and Development. Her signature trademark is multi-sited research designed to understand how migration connects societies of origin and destination, transforming them socially, politically, and culturally. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who engages in team science. Her motto: no one is as knowledgeable as everyone.  

Getting Acquainted With Those We Oppose

Inge Melchior (ORCID)
Inge defended her PhD on Estonian memory politics in the Anthropology Department at VU University Amsterdam in 2015. Since becoming a lecturer at FASoS in 2018, she has enthusiastically shared her ethnographic struggles, fascination for Central and Eastern European societies, and her expertise in “memory studies from below” with her students 

Farmers and Foodies

Maud Oostindie (ORCID)
Maud is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy. Her current research focuses on communication in the online public sphere, with a specific focus on climate change, sustainability, and food systems. Outside work, Maud is also passionate about food and nature—and books. 

Lifecycle of a Racetrack

Marie Rickert (ORCID)
Marie is a Linguistic Anthropologist and PhD candidate in the Department of Literature & Art and the Faculty of Dutch Philology at the University of Münster. Her research focuses on the intersection of language and culture. Marie enjoys running, good coffee, and unleashing her culinary creativity in the kitchen. 

Identifying the Trouble With Practices of Artistic Research

Inge Römgens (ORCID)
Inge is a Lecturer and PhD candidate at University College Maastricht (UCM). Her research focuses on practices of artistic research and education. Through participant observation in teams where artists and academics collaborate, she learns how artistic research is done, defined, and discussed in practice. Inge enjoys writing and theatre practices. 

Portrait of a Museum

Emilie Sitzia (ORCID)
Emilie holds a special chair at the University of Amsterdam and is Associate Professor of Cultural Education at the University of Maastricht. She specialises in the impact of art on audiences, museology, and word/image interdisciplinary studies. Emilie enjoys writing in trains, eating chocolate, and swimming. 

Going Crypto

Aneta Spendzharova (ORCID)
Aneta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. She researches the international regime complexity in global financial governance, examining institutions, rules, and actors. Aneta feels at home in the mountains and, in her spare time, enjoys hiking. 

The Long Game

Paul Stephenson (ORCID)
Paul is an Associate Professor of European Public Policy in the Department of Political Science. His research explores the role of EU institutions and officials, particularly the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors, in the EU’s policy-making processes. He is particularly interested in transport and cohesion policy, as well as the politics of evaluation. Paul enjoys writing and reading contemporary poetry. 

Bed-Sharing Practices in a Holy City in Senegal

Karlien Strijbosch (ORCID)
Karlien is a PhD candidate in the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development research group. She is broadly interested in how social structures of inequality influence people’s lives in various intersecting ways. For her PhD research, she investigates how ideas about masculinities relate to return and deportation, mostly by connecting with male Senegalese returnees themselves. 

An Encounter With Amusement Hunters on Chinese Social Media Platforms

Yiming Wang
Yiming is a PhD candidate in the Arts, Media and Culture (AMC) programme at Maastricht University. She is focusing on participatory censorship and fan communities in China. Her research interests include fan studies, popular culture, censorship studies, and gender studies. 

Do Engineers Dream of Electric People?

Jacob Ward (ORCID)
Jacob is a historian of science, technology, and politics. This piece was inspired by his forthcoming book.31 Jacob is now researching a new project, “The Prediction Machine: Futurology, Technology, and Neoliberalism in British Government,” funded by a VENI grant from NWO, the Dutch Research Council. 

Caring for Teeth

Sally Wyatt (ORCID)
Sally is Professor of Digital Cultures and Associate Dean for Research. Her research focuses on the development and use of digital technologies in healthcare and their implications for knowledge production in the social sciences and the humanities. The brace has worked; the feeling of imminent dislocation has faded. 

Big Brown Data

Ragna Zeissn (ORCID)
Ragna works as an Assistant Professor in Science and Technology Studies in the Department of Society Studies. Her research interests include the classification and governance of science and technology in the domains of water, sanitation, and nature/environments. She enjoys reading, writing, teaching, photography, the outdoors, and spending time with her children.