Annemarie Mol

Who is Annemarie Mol?

Annemarie Mol is a Dutch ethnographer and philosopher. She is the Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Winner of the Constantijn & Christiaan Huijgens Grant from the NWO in 1990 to study 'Differences in Medicine', she was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2010 to study 'The Eating Body in Western Practice and Theory'.

She has helped to develop post-ANT/feminist understandings of science, technology and medicine. In her earlier work she explored the performativity of health care practices, argued that realities are generated within those practices, and noted that since practices differ, so too do realities. The body, as she expressed it, is multiple: it is more than one but it is also less than many. This is an empirical argument about ontology As a part of this she also developed the notion of 'ontological politics', arguing that since realities or the conditions of possibility vary between practices, this means that they are not given but might be changed.