I am a Senior Full Professor of Medieval History at Ghent University, with a cross-appointment (2024–2026) at the University of Toronto. My research explores the religious and cultural history of Western Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, with particular focus on community life, discourses of reform, memory and identity formation, hagiography, the reception of the medieval past, and the history of textual criticism and editorial practice. Increasingly, I embed this work in interdisciplinary collaborations with colleagues at Ghent University and internationally.
My fellowships and visiting professorships include Clare Hall, Cambridge; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Wassenaar; the Flemish Academic Center, Brussels; the Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University; the the Institute for Advanced Study, Bristol; and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan/Brescia. I have also delivered numerous keynote and invited lectures across Europe, North America, and Asia.
In addition, my contribution to research has been recognized with several awards. I received the Prix Baron de Saint-Genois of the Académie Royale de Belgique (2001); the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation (2012); the title of Laureate in Humanities from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (2013); the Nancy Lyman Roelker Prize from the Sixteenth-Century Society (2024); and an award for science communication from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (2025). Finally, Ghent University’s Special Research Fund awarded me four five-year research professorships (2005, 2010, 2015, 2025).
Research output
My work has appeared in numerous leading journals across medieval and early modern history, and in a substantial number of collective volumes. Alongside these, my bibliography includes eight monographs, among them Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100 (Cornell, 2013); Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages (Cornell, 2015); Dark Age Nunneries (Cornell, 2018); Medieval Monasticisms (De Gruyter, 2020); and Dismantling the Medieval (Brepols, 2021). I have co-edited critical editions, including (with Diane Reilly) the Acta Synodi Atrebatensis (Brepols, 2014), and have edited or co-edited multiple collective volumes.
Projects
I have led or co-led more than a dozen research projects funded by the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO), Ghent University’s Special Research Fund (BOF), and other bodies. Current projects include Hagiographic Entanglements of the Long Tenth Century (with Prof. Julie Birkholz, GhentCDH) and Regional Variation in Latin Hagiography of the Long Tenth Century (with Prof. Anne Breitbarth, UGent Linguistics). These collaborations are laying the foundations for new research infrastructures in the Humanities. I also have extensive experience supervising PhD and postdoctoral researchers.
Service (for internal service, click on the separate tab on this page)
My external service includes membership of editorial and advisory boards for journals and book series, chairing the series Communitas (Brepols), and serving on expert panels for national and European funding agencies. Beyond academia, I am committed to outreach and public engagement. Most recently I co-curated the exhibition Judith, A Carolingian Princess in Ghent? at the Sint-Pietersabdij (October 2024–January 2025).
