Hedwig te Molder is a full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where she heads the Language and Communication Group. She studies how people communicate issues of science and technology in their everyday lives, using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis. She has a special focus on the changing role of experts and expertise in an alleged 'post-truth' society. More generally, she looks at how people manage their knowledge rights and knowledge responsibilities, and the hidden moralities in doing so. Domains of application range from nutrition, vaccination, corona-communication, and ADHD to gene editing and climate change. In these controversial areas, her applied and theoretical interest lies in how to make the shift from debate to dialogue.
Hedwig published more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters. She is currently supervising 9 PhDs. The most recently completed PhD project (2022) is From debate to dialogue: A conversation analysis of public meetings on the health effects of livestock farming in the Netherlands by Lotte van Burgsteden (with distinction/cum laude).
Together with Jeffrey Robinson (Portland State University), she leads the project Shots at Stake: Facilitating interactions between professionals and parents on childhood vaccination (2020-2024). With Bogdana Huma, and in collaboration with the RIVM, she supervises Conversation Ambassadors in Action! Bottom-up vaccination communication in Dutch vulnerable areas (2023-2027). With Lotte van Burgsteden, Bas de Boer, Nora Hamdiui, and colleagues from Amsterdam UMC, AVL Hospital, and the University of Twente, Hedwig is implementing the NWO-KWF Dutch Cancer Society project For women, with women: increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the cervical cancer screening programme with a participatory technology approach to develop lab-on-a-chip screening in urine (4WWW) (2023-2027).
In 2007, Hedwig received the Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association for Conversation and Cognition (Cambridge University Press, with Jonathan Potter). In 2009, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and in 2015 a Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna. In 2017, she was a senior Fulbright Scholar at Rutgers University, School of Communication and Information, USA.
She chairs the social-ethical committee of the COGEM, the scientific advisory board for the Dutch government on genetic modification, and is a member of the Executive Board.
Together with Noëlle Aarts (Radboud University), she founded the Centre for Dialogue.
Hedwig coordinates the international master track Dialogue, Health and Society, together with Bogdana Huma.
She frequently features in the media and is a well-known speaker.
On September 29, 2021, Hedwig gave her inaugural speech at the VU (in Dutch): "Dialogue against the tide. Beyond value shyness"/"Dialoog tegen de stroom in. De waardenschaamte voorbij".
