research directory

Sociology, STEM

Cortois, Liza

Leuven | Belgium

Overview

Liza Cortois recently obtained her PhD (2019) with a dissertation entitled: Becoming an individual. A Cultural-Sociological Study of Socialization in Individualistic Scripts.

This project was funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and dealt with socialization in individualist culture in three case studies that embody the individualist cultural ethos in distinct societal field: spirituality, civic integration and management. Here, she combined a theoretically informed approach with qualitative methods such as participant observation and in depth interviews. With regard to the field of spirituality, she is particularly specialized in currently popular mindfulness spirituality and how it relates to the so called ‘spiritual turn in the west’ and ‘business spirituality’. She for instance published on mindfulness in relation to spirituality in the Journal of Contemporary Religion (Cortois, Aupers & Houtman, 2018). Currently, she is a post-doctoral researcher and a lecturer for introductory courses in Sociology at the University of Leuven.