Floor Basten

Floor Basten is a sociologist specializing in collective narratives—how they emerge, develop, and change. Citizenship is one of her core themes. She interprets this broadly: as membership in communities relevant to their existence. This immediately raises questions such as how access to and consultation within these communities are organized and can be improved, and how collaboration between communities could be improved. The foundation of this philosophy lies in her experience with narrative research in the public domain. Using the stories people tell, she uncovers local opportunities and challenges for more inclusive governance of organizations, neighborhoods, and schools, for example. Her knowledge of and experience with change and learning processes in organizations are instrumental in this. Currently, she is researching how the non-human world can also be better heard.

Floor also has extensive experience in education. She has conducted research on educational innovations and taught action research to school leaders for almost 10 years. She is passionate about contributing to increasing the number of zoo-operative schools, because her position is: if all schools in the Netherlands were zoo-operative, we would have a better country in three generations.

Floor is the initiator of a hybrid network for professionals who want to shape their lives and work more according to posthumanist principles. Posthumanism is a reaction to the individualistic and head-reduced human from humanism (and which most of us know as our education). This complements posthumanism with diverse communities and diverse ways of developing meaningful knowledge and practices. When the human is no longer central, a whole new world literally opens up.

Floor studied both French language and literature and General Social Sciences. Both disciplines converge in her narrative research, which she used as the basis for her dissertation. Since 2003, she has worked as an independent researcher, lecturer, and writer, with occasional temporary (postdoc) positions.