My work explores how people in increasingly atomized societies grapple with isolation, the loss of meaning, and the search for community. Beyond anthropological and philosophical analysis, I examine how Japanese rituals, literature, and aesthetics open up alternative ways of living and finding meaning.

Since 2023, I have been conducting extended fieldwork in Japan, where I lived in rehabilitation centers and private homes of so-called hikikomori—individuals who withdraw from society for prolonged periods of time. Drawing on these experiences, I write about the interplay between social structures, cultural expectations, and existential questions.

I am currently developing doctoral research on loneliness and social withdrawal in contemporary Japan, working toward a philosophical-anthropological framework that examines how modernity erodes connectedness—and what forms of cultural resonance and renewal remain. I graduated cum laude in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and studied Cultural and Political Philosophy.

My work has appeared in De Groene Amsterdammer, and I am currently writing a book that situates the phenomenon of hikikomori within broader questions of community, modernity, and spiritual emptiness. Alongside my academic work, I engage in public debate, combining philosophical analysis with a more literary mode of writing.