Jens De Rijbel (2001) is a PhD Research Fellow at Ghent University, working on the project Walls of Words: Investigating Urban Representation of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres in Middle Dutch and Middle French Literature (14th–15th century). This project examines how medieval cities were imagined, shaped, and contested through literature. Focusing on Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, Jens investigates how urban representation in Middle Dutch and Middle French texts reflected social hierarchies, political tensions, and cultural ideals. While historians and archaeologists reconstruct the material realities of these cities, literary portrayals remain relatively understudied. His research integrates literary analysis with historical, linguistic, and archaeological perspectives, demonstrating how texts actively contributed to the construction and negotiation of urban identity within broader historical periods.
Jens employs a three-tiered methodology, combining macro-level manuscript analysis (audience, transmission, context), micro-level textual analysis (urban descriptions across nine thematic categories), and a comparative approach mapping patterns across genres such as historiography, hagiography, allegorical poetry, and technical literature. A particular focus lies on the multilingual interplay between Middle Dutch and Middle French, showing how language shaped perceptions of urban space, civic identity, and social hierarchies. By juxtaposing textual representations with archaeological evidence, historical maps, and urban iconography, his work explores the dynamic interactions between literary imagination, material culture, and urban reality. This approach demonstrates that Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres were represented as ideologically charged and contested spaces, reflecting social, economic, and political concerns within the wider context of late medieval and earlier historical periods.
His broader research interests lie at the intersection of literature, archaeology, and the humanities more generally. He is particularly interested in manuscript studies, the materiality of texts, intertextuality, and questions of genre, as well as in how literary sources can be combined with archaeological and historical data to illuminate the social, cultural, and symbolic dimensions of urban life across different historical periods. Jens is especially committed to interdisciplinary approaches that reveal the complex relationships between textual, material, and historical evidence, showing how cultural, social, and political processes shaped human experience across time.