Project R-17026

Care in the Ordinary: Exploring Everyday Environments with Middle-Aged Women Living with Cancer (Research)

CONTEXT Moving towards decentralised networks of care implies a growing reliance on domestic environments, spaces not designed for caregiving since modernity, and on informal caregivers, predominantly women. Middle-Aged Women (40–65) are particularly exposed to this shift: they frequently provide simultaneous care for both older adults and children, often while facing severe illness themselves (7,232 new cancer diagnoses among women in Flanders in 2023), in a context where domestic responsibility remains culturally entrenched. OBJ This fundamental research project, rooted in interdependence and feminist theory, investigates the everyday care experiences of Middle-Aged Women Living with Cancer (MAWLWC) in Flanders by exploring how socio-physical layers of domestic and life-environments enable or hinder care practices. The study focuses on the shared spatial reality and invisible care work between the woman and her caregiver(s), framed by the realm of domesticity. METHODS Through a literature review, interviews with scholars, mutli-method approach and inhabited surveys with MAWLWC and their caregiver, the research seeks to uncover how Everyday Life-Environments and domesticity are negotiated through times of crisis. RESULTS Outcomes encompass a critical exploration of the lived experience of MAWLWC within our contemporary Everyday Life-Environments and opens way for future conceptualisation of domestic architecture in line with feminist research.

01 November 2026 - 31 October 2030