Dr. Reinekke Lengelle

Reinekke Lengelle, PhD, is associate professor Interdisciplinary Studies with Athabasca University and has been with the MAIS program since 2003. She designed and teaches MAIS 616: Writing the Self and MAIS 621: Narrative Possibilities, and guides students in their MAIS 700/701 final projects. In 2023 she began as MAIS program director.

Reinekke is also a researcher with The Hague University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands and works in the field of writing for wellbeing. She is the author of the Dutch book Jezelf Schrijven [Translation: Writing yourself], published by Gompel & Svacina in 2018, and has written more than 25 scholarly articles and book chapters.

Her award-winning book Writing the Self in Bereavement: a story of love, spousal loss, and resilience was published with Routledge in 2021. Her experience of her husband’s death was the impetus for the book and also inspired the research and revision of the MAIS 662 graduate course on mourning and trauma. In June 2021 Reinekke's book was acknowledged with the Best Book award for ethnography: the H. L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr. / Nick Trujillo “It’s a Way of Life” Award is for work that exemplifies story-telling excellence informed by scholarship and is written for both scholarly and public audiences.

In 2023 she and her colleague Katrin Den Elzen edited "Writing for Wellbeing: Theory, Research, and Practice" also published with Routledge.

Her career began as a poet, playwright, and writing teacher. In the past 20 years, she has worked as a professor and co-developer of the Career Writing method, which uses creative, expressive, and reflective writing to foster career identity development and agency.

Her most recent research is on the vulnerable researcher and becoming a researcher for the inside out. She is co-editing a book called "Good Divorces".

---

Research interests

• Writing for Wellbeing
• Dialogical Self Theory
• Career Writing: creative, reflective and expressive writing for narrative identity formation
• Narrative psychology
• Being/becoming a vulnerable researcher
• Non-violent communication

---

Educational credentials

• PhD in Narrative Identity Development (Career Writing) - 2015
• MA in Adult Education

---