LECTORAAT CHANGE MANAGEMENT – De Haagse Hogeschool

22.9.25

I sit at my desk again, four years after the official “second day”¹ of my PhD. Back then, I was buzzing with the thrill of receiving the NWO Doctoral Grant for Teachers (I was lucky enough to be one of the last cohorts that could apply for it. Unfortunately the grant will soon be discontinued), excited to be “promoted” into a five-year research period about embodiment in knowledge intensive institutions. The Dutch term promotieonderzoek (PhD Research) sounded grand, ceremonial, almost ascendant.

Day one, however, had different priorities. I spent it meticulously updating my email signatures, trying to capture in neat digital blocks something that, in reality, could not be contained. My mind and body were in a state of anti-motie (anti-motion), resisting the promotion, resisting the certainty, or responsibility of knowledge. I thought I was preparing for research, but mostly I was preparing for a static identity, a disembodied projection of competence.

Now, four years in, the PhD still hasn’t finished (another year to go) but that’s exactly the point. The trajectory, if one can call it that, has been less about reaching a fixed endpoint and more about moving, paying attention, and reflecting. I’ve come to notice the quiet choreography of bodies in institutions: how fatigue drifts through a meeting, how gestures guide understanding, and how even the smallest emotional responses can spark unforeseen insights.

The email signature from that first day now seems almost comical. It promised a static authority that could never exist. The real work which is the research, the writing, the thinking, is messy, relational, and profoundly alive. And yet, there is delight: in noticing patterns across bodies, spaces, and institutions; in discovering knowledge in the gaps, the pauses, the bodily rhythms that cannot be captured in power-point presentations or PhD sales-like pitches. The PhD is not just about filling a knowledge void. It is about learning to move with uncertainty, to let knowledge and bodies co-evolve, to accept that promotion is not a fixed title but a continuous practice.

So here I am, still sitting at the table, still in motion, still learning. Still with the same email signature but more aware that the real promotion has been a lesson in pro-motion: in movement, in curiosity, in inhabiting the unknown with one’s body, mind, and heart fully engaged.

1. https://lectoraatchangemanagement.nl/2021/09/02/pro-motion-nwo-doctoral-grant-for-teachers/ ↩︎