Personal information

Eva van Baarle is associate professor of ethics at the Netherlands Defence Academy and visiting researcher at the Department of Medical Ethics, Law and Humanities, VU University Medical Centre. She holds a PhD in philosophy, on fostering moral competence through structured ethics training. Her work focuses on the intersection of ethics, leadership, and social safety. Over the past decade, she has combined research, teaching, and leadership roles in multiple projects, including the ZonMW Just Culture in Healthcare project, a large action research project in the Defence organization titled Just Culture: Fostering Psychological Safety in the Armed Forces, a ZonMW project: Sexual Boundary Violations in Healthcare Organizations, and the Dare2Dialogue project at Amsterdam UMC, developing and piloting a dialogical ethics support program to reflect upon and foster social safety.

Eva teaches and develops academic and professional programs on ethics, leadership, social and psychological safety, and just culture, both within the Defence Academy and in collaboration with governmental and societal partners.

Research

Eva’s research explores ethics and moral challenges within organizations, focusing on the conditions that foster social and psychological safety. Her work spans multiple professional contexts—such as defence, healthcare, and education—examining how organizational climates shape moral reflection and responsible action.

She is particularly interested in how ethical and social safety interventions can strengthen trust, learning, and moral responsibility within organizations. By integrating theoretical frameworks from dialogical ethics, pragmatic hermeneutics, and care ethics, her work connects academic insight with practical impact in complex professional environments