Dr Natashe Lemos Dekker is a Cultural Anthropologist whose work is situated at the intersection of Medical and Psychological Anthropology, and with expertise in the study of aging, (palliative) care, death, and time.

In her ethnographic research in Brazil and the Netherlands, she asks how people live towards the end of life and how they recreate their world in the face of loss and grief. Particularly, her work focuses on how people organize their care needs, maintain meaningful relations at the end of life, and strive towards a good death. She is interested in the temporal orientations and moral values through which death and dying are managed.

She was awarded an NWO Veni grant for her project ‘Grief Politics’, which ethnographically explores the experiences of people who lost relatives during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil and who have become politically active as a result. In so doing, she sheds new light on the relationship between grief and politics.

She was a visiting fellow at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2022. Previously, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Montreal (2016).  She is co-editor of the ‘Transformations in Medical Anthropology’ book series, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is co-convenor of the ‘Palliative Care around the World’ network and the webinar series ‘Unfolding Finitudes’.

Grief Lab

As part of her Veni project, she has established the ‘Grief Lab’, a platform for transdisciplinary exchange between scholars, practitioners and students on the topics of loss and grief.

In her current NWO Veni project ‘Grief Politics’, she ethnographically explores the experiences of people who lost relatives during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil and who have become politically active as a result. In so doing, she sheds new light on the relationship between grief and politics.

Her other project focuses on the development of palliative care and experiences of aging in Brazil. She asks how older adults gain access to and navigate formal and informal care structures. For this, she draws on ethnographic fieldwork in palliative care centres and in the home setting.

Previously, her PhD research at the University of Amsterdam focused on end-of-life care for people with dementia in the Netherlands. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in nursing homes, she addressed how people with dementia, their family members, and professional caregivers managed and anticipated the future as part of the temporal and moral project of achieving a good death with dementia.

Research grants & honours

Dr Lemos Dekker was awarded an NWO Veni grant for her project ‘Grief Politics’. In 2022, she was awarded a Distinguished Women Scientists Grant from the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH). For her work on euthanasia and dementia, she has been awarded the Scholars’ Medal by the Association for the Study of Death and Society, and the INTERDEM Academy Publication Award.