prof. dr. ir. H.H. (Hinke) Haisma

Short biography

Hinke is head of the Population Research Centre at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen since 2021. She holds a position as professor in Child Nutrition and Population Health. She has a background (MSc) in Human Nutrition from Wageningen University (1992), and a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Groningen (2004). She was employed as an associate professional officer at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna (from 1995 to 1998), and thereafter at the Federal University in Pelotas, Brazil (until 2002) as a secondment by the Pan American Healthy Organisation. She worked at the department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen from 2006-2009. In 2009 she was employed as a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences in Groningen.

Her research integrates the biomedical with the social sciences. It focuses on inequalities in children's and parental capabilities in relation to child nutrition and population health. The Capability Approach as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum takes a central position in her research. Her research group developed the Capability Framework for Child Growth and subsequently the Multi-dimensional Index for Child Growth. This capability perspective brings to light indirect causes of malnutrition that remain hidden in the causal chain when using a biomedical approach.

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