I am a psychiatrist and ethicist, currently working at Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels. I completed my medical and psychiatric training at KU Leuven in Belgium, earned a PhD in medical ethics, and a postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, followed by a postdoctoral research grant from Belgium’s public research council (FWO). More recently, I was a fellow-in-residence at the E&L Safra Center for Ethics and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard University.

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As a psychiatrist from Belgium, I experienced the particularly complex ethical challenge of psychiatric euthanasia, a practice permitted in a few and an increasing number of countries. I decided to pursue rigorous empirical and philosophical research on this issue, not because I advocate for the practice but because it poses foundational questions for psychiatry and, indeed, our society and humanity at large. I am at work on a book on psychiatric euthanasia and its challenge to modern society.​

 

 

My research has been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, and the Journal of Medical Ethics, among others. I was invited to testify before the Canadian Parliament on the country’s medical assistance in dying law and served as an ethics advisor to governmental and non-profit organizations, including the US DARPA through RAND on a suicide prevention project. I also serve on the editorial board of the BrJPsych Open and have written for outlets such as Psyche (Aeon).