Projects
Mechanisms and eco-evolutionary implications of urban evolution in the water flea Daphnia KU Leuven
Urbanization induces strong environmental alterations and is considered a strong selective agent in current day landscapes. I previously showed that the water flea Daphnia magna genetically adapts to urbanization via the evolution of a higher heat tolerance, a faster pace-of-life, and higher concentrations of energy reserves. Daphnia is an important interactor in freshwater ponds and pools, contributing to the clear-water phase via top-down ...
Bruges-Housing policy plan KU Leuven
The city of Bruges wishes to draw up a housing policy plan. By a housing policy plan we mean a municipal policy document approved by the city council that reflects the long-term vision of the municipality on the various aspects of local housing policy. It is the end result of a planning process with the various local housing actors, which, starting from the knowledge and analysis of the given situation, leads in a number of steps to priority ...
Housing pathways of refugees in the Flemish nebular city KU Leuven
By means of multiannual qualitative research my PhD project investigates refugees housing careers both in the past and future. While previous research on housing careers mainly used to focus on outcomes in migration countries, researchers like Firang (2018) describe the probable influence of homeland housing situations (past) on immigrants’ further housing careers, concerning housing preferences, expectations and aspirations in their ...
Searching a way with mental troubles: pathways of ‘illness’, psychiatry and life in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso KU Leuven
This thesis follows the lives of people who, by themselves and with others, are making their way while dealing with (past) symptoms of mental illness in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. They do so in relation to a space that was also the starting point of my fieldwork – the psychiatry ward of a state hospital – as well as other therapeutic spaces and the different forms of knowledge and religious experience that the city offers. They ...
Disentangling relational space as a new perspective for contemporary collective urbanism. The case Muide Meulestede Morgen, Gent, Belgium. KU Leuven
Cities, as relational incubators, are more than a container of physical infrastructure for social or economic processes to unfold, they combine all aspects of social life into a complex whole, in which absolute, relative and relational space are playing active roles. Where the role of the relational space within urban life is recognized and studied through various disciplinary approaches that focus on urban life, there is no transdisciplinary ...
Painting/Mapping the Medieval Landscape. A Landscape-archaeological analysis of the medieval landscape around Bruges as depicted by Pieter Pourbus Ghent University
During the Middle Ages, the metropolis of Bruges thrived through its oversea trade. A large tidal inlet – called Zwin – provided a navigable passage from the North Sea, through the wetlands, to heart of the city. In the middle of the 16th century, the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) transformed the Zwin area from an axis of trade into a frontline of war. Of course, this had a profound impact on the environment. At the start of this sudden ...
Always humiliated, nevertheless De Hooghe. Biography of Cornelis de Hooghe (1541-1583) KU Leuven
Biography of Cornelis de Hooghe (1541–1583)
Cornelis de Hooghe (1541–1583) was one of the most intruiging mapmakers in the Low Countries of the sixteenth century. He consistently claimed to be the illegitimate son of emperor Charles V, father of Philip II of Spain and Margareth of Austria. Although some see De Hooghe as a fool or a charlatan, his claim is supported by the facts that he worked for his presumed half-sister Margareth of ...