About
Dr Robin Rose Breetveld is a creative methods sociologist, researcher, and artist. They are an academic and visual artist who focusses on queer lived experiences through their visually and narratively powerful work. Robin Rose has a passion to bridge the gaps between social research and art, and has been teaching within academia for over 10 years. Their work is a reflection of their dedication to amplify the voices of those who often go unheard.
Their academic trajectory started with, ironically, a handful of rejections from Dutch art academies. Considered too young and too classically schooled to be a successful first-year art student, Robin Rose was forced to turn to their second academic preference: the social sciences.
Their Bachelor's degree in Social Work and Social Services at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (De Haagse Hogeschool, The Netherlands) allowed them to engage with mental health and wellbeing, marginalisation, and LGBT+ rights, in ways that would have otherwise remained unobtainable.
During this time, visual art took a back seat at their creative focus shifted to the written word, and it was not until their PhD in Sociology (nearly a decade later at the University of Kent, England) that they truly rekindled their love for illustrative and visual storytelling.
This reconnection allowed them to piece together the aspirations to see and develop a multidisciplinary collaboration between the arts and the sociology, which is reflected in their praised Doctoral Thesis "Bisexual (Un)Belonging: Exploring the Socio-Spatial Negotiation of Plurisexual Individuals in LGBT+ and Queer Spaces" (2023).
The thesis explores innovative artistic research methods to convey complex social and emotional topics on feelings of (un)belonging, of discrimination and power, taking ownership over one's own story and experiences, all while negotiating the tension of being an identity researcher who is figuring out they are along the way.
Robin Rose aims to publish from the thesis in multidisciplinary ways, within academic journals as well as a graphic novel, to make their work available to a larger audience and closing the gaps between sexual scholarship, sociology, and the wider public - ensuring it gets to be accessible to those who need it most.
Robin Rose is currently available for freelance research projects, artistic knowledge exchange, as well as guest-lectures on creative multidisciplinary research methods and plurisexual theory.
