Sander Govaerts studied history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2019 and worked as assistant professor and postdoctoral researcher at the Radboud University, Utrecht University, and Ghent University. In 2023-2024 he did research at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen with support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
From October 2026 onwards Sander Govaerts leads the ERC-funded project 'Ecological Entanglements and Biodiversity in Late Medieval Northern Europe, 1400-1600'.
He is founder and editor of the book series Holocene Histories: Humans, Plants, Animals (https://lup.nl/series/holocene-histories-series/).