The ENAS Graduate Panel brings together Pre-Doc, PhD, and Postdoc scholars working in the interdisciplinary field of age and aging studies. We meet every third Wednesday of the month at 17:00 CET (except in July and December) to support one another in our academic journeys. Our members’ research spans literary studies, media and communication studies, history, medical humanities, and more, creating a vibrant space for scholarly exchange.
Who We Are
The panel is currently led by Femke De Sutter, Hans-Georg Eilenberger, and Charlotte Rathjen.
Dr. Femke De Sutter is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research interests include cultural gerontology, film studies, and gender studies. Her dissertation, The Belgian Silvering Screen, explored representations and discourses of older adults in Belgian film history. Femke has published in Journal of Aging Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Feminist Media Studies. She plans to submit her dissertation in February 2026.
Dr. Hans-Georg Eilenberger is an assistant professor at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. His research explores existential meaning-making in later life, with a particular focus on questions of embodiment, generativity, and the experience of queer and trans people. Hans-Georg obtained his PhD from Tilburg University with a dissertation entitled Embodying Age: A Phenomenology of the Older Body. In this work, he develops a phenomenological understanding of embodiment in later life that challenges reductive narratives of ageing past midlife as inevitable decline.
Charlotte Rathjen is a doctoral candidate at Leipzig University, Germany, where she is writing a dissertation on numerical age references in modern narrative fiction. She studied literary studies, theatre studies, and philosophy at Leipzig University and the University of Edinburgh. From 2022 to 2023, she worked as a research and teaching associate at Leipzig University. Research stays took her to the German Literature Archive in Marbach in 2023 and to Brown University, USA, in 2024. Her research interests include literary age studies, the cultural history of age, narratology, time studies, and the social and cultural politics of health and aging. She plans to submit her dissertation in Winter 2027.
Our Origins and Mission
The ENAS Graduate Panel was launched at the 2025 ENAS and NANAS joint conference at the University of Lleida, Spain. Initiated by Femke De Sutter, our first meeting took place in June 2025.
Our mission is built on four pillars:
1. Peer Support: A welcoming space to share experiences, ask questions, and co-create resources (e.g., guides on submitting journal articles or organizing conference panels).
2. Feedback: An open invitation to share your work at any stage and receive constructive, collegial input.
3. Creation: We aim to develop workshops, possibly a group writing project, and in the future a symposium.
4. Network: We create connections among scholars to strengthen mutual support and expand the reach of age and aging studies.
What We Do
Our monthly meetings are informal and supportive. We discuss literature, concepts, and theories related to age and aging, and share experiences around publishing, writing, and navigating academic life. In addition to these gatherings, we host workshops and feedback sessions, where members can present their work and receive thoughtful responses from peers.
We’re always open to new ideas, whether it’s a topic for discussion, a workshop proposal, or a collaborative initiative.
Join Us
Interested in joining a meeting, proposing a workshop, or learning more about the panel?
📧 Contact us at enasgradpanel@gmail.com We’d love to hear from you!
