Ilse van Rijn is Head of 3rd Cycle Research at the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her research focuses on embodied writing, storytelling and feminist legacies in a more-than-human world.

Before moving to Zurich, Ilse was based at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as a lecturer and researcher and worked as a tutor in the 3rd cycle program THIRD at DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam University of the Arts (2020– 2022). At the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (GRA), she developed the theory programme of the Department of Image & Language, initiated the temporary master’s programme in Approaching Language (Sandberg Institute, 2019) and the inter-curricular programme in Daily Writing (GRA, 2022). Her studies have led Ilse from Amsterdam (UvA) to Paris (Paris I/Sorbonne), Maastricht (JvE), and back to France (Ecole Normale Supérieure). She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), undertaken in collaboration with the Rietveld (GRA) and the Van Eyck (JvE), in which she questions the operative force of writing and develops a poetics of the artist’s text (The Artist’s Text as Work of Art, 2017).

Her many articles, stories, performances, seminars and workshops include “Fabulous Encounters/Neophytes” (Uniarts Stockholm, Oct 2024), “Fire, or how to get rid of those embarrassing graphic markers” (CARPA7/Uniarts Helsinki; Looiersgracht 60 Amsterdam, in collaboration with Martine Stig); “Postpartum” (DWR 220, Nov–Dec 2022); “Ghostwriting and Artists’ Texts” (Amsterdam: AUP, 2022).