Projects

This project will look at the phenomenon of cultural exchange based on the study of the role of medieval monastic groups in the creation and dissemination of entertainment games. Monastic groups incorporated elements of play from secular culture and transformed them to make them suitable for use inside the monastery and usable in the dissemination of monastic attitudes in the secular world.

This project examines literary culture in the Southern Low Countries during a formative period in the history of Belgium (1750-1830). In the historiography of the Low Countries, eighteenth-century literature – especially as it was created and received in the Southern part – remained largely unexplored. More importantly, in previous research, the multilingual and hybrid character of this literature has been mostly neglected. Researchers indeed ...

If still largely underexplored, proto-Belgian 18th-century literature in turn has to date mainly been described from a nation-state, monolinguistic perspective. The present project aims to broaden this perspective by investigating the extent to which proto-Belgian literature was subject to transcultural influences, as well as how it was in turn actively involved in the process of European literary exchange. The specific focus of the project ...

The MEMORI-project aims to develop a dosimeter to monitor the exposure of museum objects to organic vapours in museum enclosures. These vapours (acetic acid, formic acid) are produced by wooden frames. The European partners develop the dosimeter, whereas we specifically examine the degradation of pigments under the influence of organic vapours, by using Raman spectrsocopy.

Despite significant advances that have been made in human in vitro fertilization (IVF), a pregnancy can only be established in 35 % of IVF-cycles. To date, selection of human embryos for transfer is based on morphological embryo scoring. Prolonged culture (to day 5 (blastocyst) instead of day 3) can increase implantation rates after transfer, but may cause epigenetic changes in embryos or imprinting disorders in babies born after IVF. ...

In vitro conditions can’t mimic the in vivo situation completely: in vivo embryos are exposed to autocrine, paracrine and endocrine factors. In vitro only autocrine factors remain, they are the cause of a better development during groupculture. In these project, we try to identify the autocrine factors and check if the supplementation of these factors improves the human culture medium.

The project will reveal to what extent and in what sense Eastern European networks of émigré communities, often keeping contacts with non-conformist and dissident circles living under authoritarian regimes in their countries of origins, can be considered as important factors in creating contemporary Europe. By the umbrella term ‘civil engagement transfers’ we refer to various exchanges of practices of self-organization and engagement that ...

This project aims to study the role of women as knowledge ‘agents’ in university cities to understand
how gender shaped the transfer of knowledge in the early modern period. Comparing the ‘Catholic’
university of Leuven with the ‘Calvinist’ university of Leiden (1575-1675), it inspects the impact of
social, cultural and religious parameters on the agency of women in early modern academia. It aims
to: 1) Identify the women ...