Our services are dedicated to provide expertise, education, and consultation at the intersection of ethics, law, society, communication, and medicine. We support healthcare professionals, researchers, educators, and consortia with a broad range of services—from moral deliberation and study protocol reviews to interdisciplinary collaboration and medical communication consulting.
Below, you’ll find an overview of our key services. Feel free to contact our experts!
We offer structured moral deliberation to support professionals and teams in reflecting on ethical questions that arise in clinical practice, research, and health policy. These sessions create space for open dialogue, clarify values, and help navigate complex decisions.
Moral deliberation can be used to explore concrete cases involving issues such as patient autonomy, professional responsibility, uncertainty in treatment choices, or dilemmas in resource allocation. It fosters mutual understanding, strong teams of professionals and supports ethically coherent decision-making in everyday practice.
Contact person(s): Rieke van der Graaf, Hans van Delden, Ghislaine van Thiel, Marieke Hollestelle
We contribute to education at all levels through courses, guest lectures, and workshops on ethical, legal, and social aspects of health care and biomedical research. Our teaching covers topics such as research ethics, clinical ethics, health law, medical humanities, narrative medicine, qualitative research methods, and the history of medicine.
We are involved in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as in professional training for clinicians and non-academic (research) partners, such as patients or civic communities. Educational activities can be tailored to specific disciplines or learning goals, and we regularly collaborate with other departments and institutions. We also contribute as topic experts to curriculum revisions, redesigns, renewals, or enhancements. Our aim is to foster critical reflection, ethical awareness, and interdisciplinary thinking in health and medicine.
Contact person(s): Amber Hagedoorn, Menno Mostert, Astrid Janssens
We offer internship opportunities for students interested in the ethical, legal, and social dimensions of health care, biomedical research, and health humanities. Interns can take part in ongoing research projects or develop their own topic under supervision, depending on their background and interests.
Our department welcomes students from diverse fields, including medicine, philosophy, law, history, social sciences, and health sciences. Internships may involve literature reviews, qualitative research, ethical analysis, or contributions to education and policy projects. We provide a stimulating academic environment with close supervision and opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary work.
Contact person(s): Ghislaine van Thiel, Marieke Hollestelle, Karin Jongsma
We offer consultation on ethical and other aspects of study protocols for researchers developing clinical or biomedical studies. Our support focuses on identifying and addressing issues early in the research design, including ethical aspects, medical communication, and other participant materials, health law, participant vulnerability, ethics-by-design in technology, and patient and public engagement.
Consultations can strengthen the quality of your study and prepare for review by ethics committees or funding bodies. We work with researchers from a wide range of disciplines and patients, and are available for one-time feedback or ongoing collaboration throughout the research process.
Contact person(s): Rieke van der Graaf, Hans van Delden, Astrid Janssens, Leonie Visser
We design and lead (ethics) work packages for national and international research consortia. Our contributions to identify and evaluate ethical, legal, community engagement, and social aspects attempt to integrate these aspects within the project from the start, supporting responsible research and innovation.
We tailor work packages to the needs of the consortium, addressing topics such as research ethics, governance, patient and public involvement, medical communication, societal impact, and ethical guidance.
Our team brings experience in coordinating interdisciplinary ethical, legal, and social components and collaborating with diverse stakeholders. We are available as partners in grant applications and throughout the lifecycle of research projects.
Contact person(s): Caspar Safarlou, Ghislaine van Thiel, Astrid Janssens, Marieke Hollestelle
Our department contributes to ethics committees and advisory boards at institutional, national, and international levels. Internally, we partake in the Hospital Ethics Committee (Commissie Medische Ethiek), the Fertility Deliberation Group (Beraadsgroep Voortplantingsgeneeskunde), and Research Ethics Committees (NedMec), the Biobank Research Ethics Committee (TCBio), and the Medical-Ethical Policy Committee (Medisch Ethische Beleidscommissie, WKZ). We also support departments with moral deliberation and ethical-legal consultation.
Beyond the UMC Utrecht, our staff members serve as experts in national bodies such as the Health Council of the Netherlands and in international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO). We are recognized as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Bioethics and contribute to global discussions on ethics in health care and research.
Contact person(s): Ghislaine van Thiel, Marieke Hollestelle, Rieke van der Graaf
We actively collaborate with researchers, clinicians, technology developers, societal stakeholders/communities, and policy-makers across disciplines to study and understand the ethical, legal, and social dimensions of medicine, care, and the health sector. Our department brings expertise in bioethics, health law, history, social sciences, and the broader field of health humanities to complement clinical, biomedical, and public health research.
We contribute to interdisciplinary projects through conceptual analysis, empirical research, stakeholder engagement, co-creation, and ethical reflection. Whether as co-applicants on grant proposals or as embedded partners in ongoing studies, we help ensure that ethical and medical humanities-related questions are addressed thoughtfully and rigorously. We welcome collaboration at any stage of a project, from design to implementation and evaluation.
Contact person(s): Megan Milota, Astrid Janssens, Katherine Bassil, Rieke van der Graaf
From a social sciences perspective, we design, perform and consult on medical communication research, aiming to investigate and improve healthcare professional-patient communication and patient involvement, as well as medical communication provided through websites, (digital) tools, letters and flyers. We also consult and contribute to healthcare innovation aimed at enhancing patient experiences and/or the quality of care, for example by means of workshops for professionals, patient education, and/or communication tools. We hereby often mix methods (qualitative and quantitative), and apply participatory approaches, connecting with persons with lived experience and stakeholders from academia, healthcare, industry, and society.
Contact person: Leonie Visser