I am a historian and sociologist working as a FWO junior postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. My work blends academic research with the development of public history and heritage projects, and I have experience in art criticism.
Since 2016, I have been doing research in the history of history-writing and the history and sociology of knowledge at Ghent University (MA in History 2017, PhD in History 2024) and at The University of Chicago (MA in the Social Sciences 2018). My academic work questions the past and present conditions in which knowledge is produced. In June 2024, I defended a dissertation titled The Price of History about the history of research funding and its effects on the historical discipline since 1970. In October 2024, I started a postdoctoral research project on the history of peer review in the humanities (with Sjang ten Hagen at Utrecht University), which touches on issues of academic inequality, (hyper)competition, and quantitative performance assessment. Together with Berber Bevernage, Eline Mestdagh, and Walderez Ramalho, I also research uses of the past by populist political parties and movements.
I strongly believe in the significance of making academic research accessible to the broader public and in the power of narratives to touch people and transform our beliefs. In my roles as an academic, a history-enthusiast and as a feminist art-lover, I frequently share my thoughts through various public platforms. I worked as heritage consultant for KU Leuven Libraries and am working on a podcast project on unknown urban spaces and their histories in Antwerp (Belgium) with Troebel vzw. In my free time, I am a museum guide at the Rubenshuis. Up to 2016, I was a freelance art critic, writing mostly about contemporary art, but also at times about theatre and performance arts. I also work(ed) as a volunteer, freelancer, and intern in a variety of cultural institutions and festivals in Flanders.
