I graduated in Archaeology (specialising in Roman Mediterranean Archaeology) at Ghent University in 2015. My master thesis - which was awarded with the Jacques A.E. Nenquin prize - analysed the placement of Roman honorary statues on fora in Italy. In 2016, I obtained an FWO-scholarship for my PhD on Roman urban economic architecture/space and its spatial organisation. In this dissertation, I assessed how non-invasive survey techniques, such as aerial photography and geophysical survey, can be used to identify economic buildings and can contribute to debates on urban economic zoning. One building, the macellum, a specialised food market, was proven to be detected by such non-invasive methods in multiple towns. Therefore, this market building was selected as close-up case study in my PhD and a critical restudy of the building was conducted. I further examined the urban location of these markets and their relationship with wider urban movement patterns by using space syntax methodology, a set of analytical techniques aimed at calculating spatial relationship and accessibility in cities.
After defending my PhD in October 2020, I was awarded with a six month postdoctoral fellowship at the Academia Belgica in Rome (AB-FWO funded). During this fellowship (January-June 2021), I studied the spread, appearance and organisation of food markets across the Roman Empire.
From July 2021 until April 2022, I worked as postdoctoral research assistant on a joint Ghent-VUB project that studies the effects of climate change on Roman society.
For the academic year 2022-2023, I hold a BAEF-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Classics Department. My project here deals with the unique local transformations of Roman food markets by using a life history and biography approach.
