Dr. Tereza Hendl
- Moral and political philosophy, philosophy of technology, feminist philosophy, normative and public health ethics
- Theories of justice, vulnerability and solidarity
- Ethical, social and regulatory aspects of digital health technologies
- Philosophical conceptualisations of autonomy, agency and empowerment
- Ethical aspects of sex selection and debates regarding gender, sexuality and disability
- Critical scholarship on racialization and whiteness
- The health impact of Russian imperialism
- Social epistemology, epistemic justice and de/coloniality of knowledge production
Tereza Hendl is a philosopher and bioethicist. Her research spans across moral and political philosophy, philosophy of technology, feminist philosophy, normative and public health ethics. She investigates concerns of justice, vulnerability, empowerment and solidarity and the ethics and epistemology of health technologies and interventions.
She currently works as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Co-lead on the project “META – mHealth: Ethical, legal and societal aspects in the technological age” at the University of Augsburg and Research Associate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her latest research explores the democratizing potential of digital health technologies as well as interrogations of these technologies as a mode of reinforcing a particular self, that of the autonomous consumer. She is concerned with the ways dominant social norms, structural inequalities and power asymmetries manifest in and through technologies and algorithms and which impact this has on individual, social and global levels. She investigates how digital health technologies can become more inclusive and just, informed by material conditions, lived experiences and needs of diverse populations and beneficent to a wide cohort of users, including structurally marginalised, oppressed and vulnerable groups.
As a scholar concerned with structural issues of justice, she has been active in debates on gender and racial justice as well as discussions on de/coloniality. She is the founder of the CEE Feminist Research Network, supporting feminist researchers from Central and Eastern Europe, countering the epistemic marginalisation of CEE scholarship and amplifying CEE critiques of structural oppression and coloniality, including in knowledge production. She is a member of the Independent Resource Group for Global Health Justice; a German DFG-funded network Equality Data and she serves as the board member of AtGender, the European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation.
Tereza Hendl holds a PhD in Philosophy from Macquarie University, Australia. Her dissertation explored the ethics of prenatal sex selection for social reasons. She has previously worked as a Research Associate at the University of Sydney on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project investigating how young people with impairment resist ableism in their transition to adulthood. She has conducted research as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sydney Health Ethics and a Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne on the ARC Linkage Project “Regulating autologous stem cell therapies in Australia,” an interdisciplinary project that promoted ethical and socially responsible innovation with stem cells. She has contributed to public reviews of Australian policy on the use of assisted reproductive technology in clinical practice and research as well as the regulation of autologous cell and tissue products. She has appeared in a wide range of media to participate in public debates about health technologies and ensure that her scholarly work contributes to society and informs policymaking. For example, in 2015 she delivered a TEDxMacquarie University talk raising awareness about the ethical implications of sex selection based on gender preference.
In recognition of her research, Tereza Hendl was awarded the 2015 Max Charlesworth Prize in Bioethics by the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL). She held the Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarship at the Oxford University Ethox Centre in the UK, was awarded a Brocher Foundation Residency in Switzerland and selected to be a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute at the Australian National University and major American Center for Bioethics, the Hastings Center.
Selected publications
selected presentations
2022
Forthcoming: Hendl, T., and B. Jansky. “A Matter of Justice: Why Digital Health Technologies Warrant an Intersectional Transformation.” World Congress of Bioethics, Basel, Switzerland, July 20-22, 2022.
Forthcoming: Hendl, T., and T. Roxanne. “Digital Surveillance in a Pandemic-Response: What Bioethics Ought to Learn from Indigenous Perspectives.” World Congress of Bioethics, Basel, Switzerland, July 20-22, 2022.
Forthcoming: Hendl, T., Ganguli-Mitra, A., and A. Shahvisi. “Decolonizing Feminist Bioethics.” Congress of the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB), Basel, Switzerland, July 18-19, 2022.
Hendl, T. „Russian Imperialism, Intergenerational Trauma and Resistance.“ Roundtable „The invasion of Ukraine in Historical and Comparative International Context“ with Dr Yasser Munif and Dr Ileana Nachescu. The Center for European Studies, Rutgers University. April 20, 2022.
Hendl, T. „Health, Russian Imperialism and Intergenerational Trauma.“ CRE Research Seminar, University of Montreal. April 19, 2022.
2021
Hendl, T. “Examining Western Dimensions of White ‘Privilege’ and Supremacy: On the Need for an Intersectional Theory of Whiteness.” Online workshop: Migration to/from/within CEE: Decolonial perspectives online workshop, co-organized by Middlesex University, England); University of Glasgow, Scotland; and Cracow University of Economics, Poland, Nov 25, 2021.
Jansky, B., and T. Hendl. “Patient activism in mHeath: by whom and for whom?“ Brocher Workshop The Ethics of mHealth as a Global Phenomenon, Oct 28, 2021.
Hendl, T. and A. Shukla. “Can mHealth Democratize Health?“ Brocher Workshop The Ethics of mHealth as a Global Phenomenon, Oct 27, 2021.
Hendl, T. “Examining Western Dimensions of White ‘Privilege’ and Supremacy: On the Need for an Intersectional Theory of Whiteness.” Workshop "Race and Racism / 'Rasse' und Rassismus." Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Oct 5, 2021.
Hendl, T. “Examining Western Dimensions of White ‘Privilege’ and Supremacy: On the Need for an Intersectional Theory of Whiteness.“ Workshop: Not Quite Equal: Exploring Intersectional Power Relations in the European East-West Divide. University of Augsburg, Germany, May 31, 2021.
Hendl, T., and T. Roxanne. “Digital Surveillance in a Pandemic-Response: What Bioethics Ought to Learn from Indigenous Perspectives.” CEPE/IACAP Joint Conference. Universität Hamburg, Germany, July 5-9, 2021.
Hendl, T., and T. Roxanne. “Digital Surveillance in a Pandemic-Response: What Bioethics Ought to Learn from Indigenous Perspectives.” The Society for Philosophy and Technology Conference, June 28-30, 2021.
Hendl, T., and B. Jansky. “A Matter of Justice: Why Digital Health Technologies Warrant an Intersectional Feminist Perspective.” The Society for Philosophy and Technology Conference, June 28-30, 2021.
Hendl, T. “Theorising Western Dimensions of White ‘Privilege’ and Supremacy: On the Need for an Intersectional Theory of Whiteness.“ Workshop: Not Quite Equal: Exploring Intersectional Power Relations in the European East-West Divide. University of Augsburg, Germany, May 31, 2021.
Hendl, T. Brocher café: Covid-19 and Injustice. Brocher Foundation, Switzerland, May 27, 2021.
Hendl T., and T. Kayali Browne. “Is ‘Gender Disappointment’ a Justification for Sex Selection?“ Reproductive Ethics Conference, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, April 8, 2021.
2020
Hendl, T., and T. Roxanne. “Digital Surveillance in a Pandemic-Response: What Bioethics Needs to Learn from Indigenous Perspectives.” Ethical Governance of Surveillance Technologies in Times of Crisis. Utrecht University, the Netherlands, Nov 2020.
Hendl, T., Jansky, B., and V. Wild. “Beyond ‘Femtech’: mHealth Warrants a Feminist Perspective.“ Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) Conference, Philadelphia, the US, June 2020.
Hendl, T. “Beyond the hype: Opportunities and challenges in mHealth.“ eHealth Trends and Innovations symposium. LMU Center for Advanced Studies, Munich, Germany, March 6, 2020.
2019
Hendl, T. “mHealth, Self-Management and Empowerment: Digital Health Technologies From a Public Health Perspective.” European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Healthcare (ESPMH), Oslo, Norway, August 2019.
Hendl, T., Wild, V: "Beyond Hype: Opportunities and Challenges in mHealth." In the Ethox and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities Seminar, the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, UK, May 2019.
Hendl, T. and B. Jansky. "Countering the Suppression of Diversity in Period and Fertility Apps: The Role of Autoethnographic Research." Methods in Questions: Epistemologies of Gender and Sexuality Seminar Series, University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, UK, May 2019.
Hendl, T. "Health, Self-management and Empowerment: mHealth Technologies from a Public Health Perspective." New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, St Cross College of the University of Oxford, UK, May 2019.
Hendl, T. and B. Jansky. "Empowered through an mHealth interface? The Epistemology Of Period and Fertility Apps." Interdisciplinary Conference on the Relations of Humans, Machines and Gender, the Braunschweig University of Art, Braunschweig, Germany, October 2019.
selected media appearances
Tereza Hendl was interviewed for the 2021 Euronews report „ Google's new AI skincare tool may not work on patients with darker skin tones.“
Hendl, T., and T. K. Browne. 2020. " Sad about having a boy not a girl? Your distress might be real but ‘gender disappointment’ is no mental illness." The Conversation.
In 2020, Tereza Hendl contributed to discussions on Facebook's "suicide prevention service", published by: welt.de, science medica center germany, msn-news.
Hendl. T., Jansky, B. 2019. " Q&A: a patient asks about the use of apps to track their menstrual cycle and fertility. What advice should they be given?" O&G Magazine of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Browne, T.K. and Hendl, T. 2017. “ Gender Equity, Not Sex Selection.” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Blog.
TEDx Talk 2016. “ Challenging Gender Selection.”
Hendl, Tereza. 2015. “ Choosing Children’s Sex is an Exercise in Sexism.” The Conversation.
Debate: Professor Gab Kovacs and Dr Tereza Hendl in a Lateline debate on the ethics of sex selection and whether it should be allowed in Australia. Lateline, ABC Australia, February 7, 2017. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is Australia's major national broadcaster.