In September 2022 Zohra Bourik joined Leyden Academy as a researcher for our project ‘Art in Healthcare’. In this participatory action research, Leyden Academy investigates, among other things, the value of active art participation with and for elderly people with a migration background in the Netherlands. Art and creativity in healthcare can be very valuable: to express yourself, to feel connected to others, to forget your limitations for a while and to be appreciated for what you are still capable of doing.
Zohra studied socio-cultural work at the Social Academy in Amsterdam and Arabic languages and cultures at the University of Amsterdam. She specialised in cultural anthropology, history and linguistics of the Middle East and North Africa. In her master’s thesis she researched ‘Oral History’ and recorded the stories of her grandmothers and other elderly people in Morocco. After her studies, Zohra worked for more than twenty years at several welfare organisations and for the past five years as a scientific researcher at the Department of Ethics, Law and Humanities at Free University Medical Centre in Amsterdam.