Paulien Daelman is a PhD researcher at Ghent University with an FWO PhD Fellowship for fundamental research. She holds a master’s degree in History from Ghent University (2023) and an M.Phil. in Environmental History from Trinity College Dublin (2024). Her expertise lies in environmental history, rural history and animal history, with a particular focus on historical human-animal interactions and the vulnerability of agricultural systems to wildlife damage. She also takes an interest in historical baselines of biodiversity and applies methods from digital humanities.
Her MA thesis examined the distribution of wild animals in 19th-century Brabant, while her M.Phil. research explored historical efforts to control sparrow populations in the Low Countries. Her PhD research investigates the interactions between humans, agriculture, and wildlife in the Low Countries (1780–1840), analyzing how different landscapes and land-use practices shaped human responses to wild animals.
