Anne de la Croix, MA, MEd, PhD 
Assistant Professor Research in Education Amsterdam UMC, The Netherlands
Department of General Practice & Faculty of Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Senior Comenius Fellow for Innovation in Education
Date of Visit: November 12, 2025
Biography
Dr. Anne de la Croix is a teacher, faculty development professional, educational innovator and researcher in HPE at Amsterdam UMC. Coming from the humanities , Anne now combines teaching, innovation, and research with an outsider’s eye—often exploring what remains invisible in the field. Her work is mostly qualitative and focuses on discourse, philosophy, and fostering humanity in medical training through rich reflection and perspectivistic agility. She is especially interested in what happens with complex concepts that are inherently personal, private and humane (empathy, reflection, identity development) – and has observed that these concepts in our field often are ‘skillified’ into behavioural ‘tricks’ that fit a tick-box system, encouraged by normative assessment standards. This phenomenon has been best described in her paper about reflective zombies, which has led Anne to search for ways to design zombie-proof education that stimulates rich reflection. Her personal journey led her to develop an educational innovation in which parents of children with disabilities (Parent Educators) play a role in different HPE curricula. For this project, she won a Senoir Comenius Fellowship Award.
Purpose of Visit
Anne is is excited to visit CHES to meet with all levels of educators, scientists, and educational administrators interested in ways to work towards a pedagogies of rich reflection and human connection. Anne enjoys ‘walking the walk’ and not just ‘talking the talk’, which means she is very interested in the person behind the student/patient/doctor/researcher she might meet, and their life journeys. Anne is would love to share scholarly perspectives and to hear about the wide breadth of work being conducted at CHES. She is especially interested in discussing research ideas for potential future collaborative projects.