Projects
Anchoring the past: A history of the practice and discourse of ‘sites of memory’ in the cases of the battlefield of Waterloo and the Berliner Stadtschloss, 1800-2000. Ghent University
This research aims to historicize Western European practices and concepts of ‘sites of memory’ as places where
the memory of a specific historical event is anchored. Through the case studies of the battlefield of Waterloo and
the Berliner Stadtschloss an analysis will be made of dominant ideas about historical sites as establishing a
special connection with the past.
Subaltern history as political culture: campesinos in Montes de MarÃa, 1960-2010 KU Leuven
This research project seeks to improve our understanding of political engagement among Latin American peasants, building upon a case study on Montes de MarÃa (Colombia), 1960-2010. Social mobilisation by people with few chances of political representativeness has been a prominent research subject, not the least for the fields of social history, Latin America studies and peasant studies. In fact, the relevance of the case will be revised from ...
CORN- Comparative Rural History Network University of Antwerp
Children in Comics: An intercultural history from 1865 to today Ghent University
Owing to their visual essence and status as a popular, modern medium, comics - newspaper strips, comics magazines and graphic novels - provide valuable insight into the transformation fo collective consciousness. This project advances the hypothesis that children in comics are distinctive embodiments of the complex experience of modernity, channeling and tempering modern anxieties and incarnating the freedom denied to adults. In testing this ...
Understanding the technological and economical history of enigmatic green copper sulfate pigments in Flemish Renaissance art. University of Antwerp
The Philosophy of History in Thomas Aquinas KU Leuven
Scholars often assume medieval thinkers made little, if any, contribution to the philosophy of history. Handbooks, historical surveys, and introductions to the philosophy of history tend to skip over the Middle Ages, moving from Greco-Roman conceptions of history to Augustine and then on to the Renaissance, or simply beginning with Vico, Hegel, or Collingwood and the emergence of history as a modern academic discipline. Similarly, handbooks ...
Diplomatic Encounters : A Cultural History of the Belgian Legation in Ottoman Istanbul (1865-1909). University of Antwerp
From Truth to Ecology Reassessing the History of the Senses, 1250-1750 KU Leuven
This project investigates the paradigm shift from truth to ecology that occurred in perception theories from 1250 to 1750 – in the period, namely, from the adoption of an Aristotelian curriculum by European universities to the Encyclopédie. In the course of the Early Modern age, I argue, the time-honoured Aristotelian claim that the senses provide insight into the real properties of bodies was replaced by a quite different understanding of ...