Team
Igor Bloch is the doctoral researcher in the colonial track at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of Ghent University and the VUB Architectural Engineering, supervised by Johan Lagae and Ine Wouters.
He graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (MA in History of Art).
His doctoral research concentrates on the urban housing question during the implementation of the 'Plan Décennal du Congo belge' (1949-1959). It discusses the creation of homes for the originating nuclear families and investigates the materiality of the construction through the lenses of class, gender, and race. In the architectural history research project, the building process is perceived as an interface between colonial and construction history.
Igor participated in 'Bauhaus Lab 2022: Camps for Liberation' at Bauhaus Dessau, which explored the history of the 1987 UN-HABITAT project in Dakawa, Tanzania, built for the comrades of the African National Congress in exile.
Tom Broes graduated as a civil engineer and architect at KULeuven and obtains a PhD in engineering and architecture from Ghent University. Since 2021, he works as a post-doctoral research fellow at the department of architecture and urban planning at Ghent University. His PhD studies a forgotten episode in Belgian planning history, referred to in historical sources as L’Urbanisation des Grandes Agglomérations, as a model case that contributes to grounding urbanism in a theory of urbanization. His specific interest lies in theorizing everyday practices from an urbanization perspective. In the planning track of this EOS-project, he specifically examines the reciprocal relationships between urbanization policies, the organization of different materials industries, and the subsequent evolution of construction labor in the Belgian context.
Simon De Nys-Ketels works as postdoctoral researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, interested in governmental and bureaucratic practices behind construction and architecture. His PhD questioned tenacious myths of Belgian Congo as a “medical model colony” through medical administration and architectures. In the legal track of the current project, he charts the professionalization of architects, contractors and construction workers within Belgium’s building sector. As such, he aims to understand how, in various occupational categories developed different forms of legal and technical expertise and (tacit) knowledges, and sought to communicate, co-produce, claim, and control law in both collaborative and conflicting ways.
Dave De ruysscher is legal historian and lawyer. He researches in themes regarding the history of commercial and private law until the present day. In 2016, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant, on the theme of collateral rights and insolvency (early modern period-19th century). In 2022, he obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant, on the topic of sovereignty of cities of trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. De ruysscher’s work tackles the connections between law and practice, with a focus on the mercantile and economic environments
Louis Debersaques (°1998, PhD researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is a historian who graduated at the University of Ghent (2022). He was the head researcher of the one-year EU funded BSCP project (University of Antwerp 2022-2023) where he examined legal recognition policies of architectural disciplines in Europe. Captivated by the concept of expertise, he scrutinizes the dialogue between construction history and legal history between 1880 and 1970. He aims to shed a light on formal dispute settlement proceedings against building actors through criminal court files within the legal resorts of Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. At the core he investigates the qualification, identification and ‘performance’ of expertise within these judicial inquiry proceedings (e.g. negligence crimes) through critical discourse analysis. As a member of the N.W. Posthumus Research School (2023-now), he advocates for the significance of legal history within the disciplines of social and economic history.
Michiel Dehaene is professor in Urbanism at the department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, where he teaches courses in urban analysis and design. He holds a degree as Engineer-Architect (KULeuven 1994), Master of Architecture in Urban Design (Harvard 1997) and a PhD (KULeuven, supervisor prof. Marcel Smets). His work focusses on sub-urban renewal, the (planning) history of dispersed urban development, sustainable cities and food planning. His long-term research has been structured around incorporating urban theories and theories of urbanization in planning and design, moving away from normative design theory. With Thomas Block and Griet Roets he has cofounded ‘De Stadsacademie’, a transdisciplinary collaboratory of Ghent University and the City of Ghent engaging researchers from different faculties, urban policy makers, civil society organizations and students to jointly address and study wicked urban sustainability challenges in Ghent (www.destadsacademie.be).
Rika Devos graduated as engineer-architect and holds a PhD in engineering sciences: architecture from Ghent University. Since 2012 she is associate professor at the BATir Department of the Ecole polytechnique de Bruxelles, ULB. Her research expertise involves diverse aspects of the history of modern architecture and construction, focussing on exhibition architecture in Belgium and abroad, shifting modes of collaboration, design tools (and their paperwork), knowledge exchange and archival challenges. She supervises Ph.D. students and postdoc researchers on related topics and publishes widely on her explorations on the boundaries and overlaps of the related disciplines of architecture and construction history.
Robby Fivez is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research is driven by a fascination with the material processes of construction and their broader societal implications. During his PhD studies, he investigated the history of concrete construction in the Belgian Congo, aiming to debunk the persistent myth of potent empire builders through detailed accounts of construction site incidents and accidents. In this project, he explores how Western building practices—both in- and outside of the Belgian Congo—relied on the exploitation of ‘cheap labour’ and ‘cheap nature’. While these externalities of building surface quite crudely in this research, they are not limited to such colonial settings. Insights from this research could therefore influence construction history research in completely different geographic and temporal settings.
Laurence Heindryckx is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated both at the Université libre de Bruxelles (BATir) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (ARCH). Her PhD dissertation studied practices of the commodification of housing in Belgium, analyzing commercial housing production as a mirror for the urban, architectural, economic, and political conditions in which it was realized. Within the EOS project, Laurence researches ways to develop, formulate and publish the shared questions and outcomes of the different dialogues, aiming to collectively bring a significant contribution to the field of Construction History by setting up an exhibition and composing an edited volume.
Johan Lagae is Full Professor at Ghent University, where he teaches 20th Century Architectural History with a global focus. He holds a PhD on colonial architecture in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has published widely on the topic, as well as on urban history in Central-Africa, on colonial built heritage and on photography in (post)colonial Africa. He co-authored two books on the architecture and urban landscapes of Kinshasa and most recently co-edited the volume African Modernism and its Afterlives (2022, with Nina Berre and Paul Wenzel Geissler). He currently acts as co-editor-in-chief of ABE Journal. He (co-)curated and contributed to several Congo/Africa-related exhibitions, and collaborated with several artists from DR Congo, including Patrick Mudekereza and Sammy Baloji. Johan Lagae was recipient of various grants, held a Francqui Chair at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2020 and was a 2019-2020 fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris.
Stephanie Van de Voorde (MSc and PhD in Architectural Engineering, 2005/2011) holds a chair in Architectural and Construction History and Heritage at the Department of Architectural Engineering of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Departing from traditional perspectives in architectural history and heritage studies, her main research topics are related to 20th century building materials and building culture, deconstruction and reuse, as well as young heritage. Since two decades, Stephanie actively contributes to the (inter)national development of Construction History, e.g. as a founding member of the International Federation on Construction History (2018), as co-organizer of the 6th International Congress on Construction History in Brussels (2018) and as co-president of the Joint VUB-ULB research group on Construction History since 2019, together with Rika Devos (ULB). Stephanie supervises PhD and post-doctoral research on various topics in the field, ranging from the history of deconstruction to the study of late-20th century building materials.
Ine Wouters, a professor in the Department of Architectural Engineering at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, holds a Master's degree in Architectural Engineering (1996) and a PhD in Engineering (2002). Her research focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: she studies the history of construction materials, the evolution of production processes, the motivations behind material applications, and the actors involved. Her goal is to provide new insights into construction history and the built heritage, evaluating historical value and addressing renovation and reuse. She co-organized the first International Summer Schools on Construction History (CH.ESS 2011-13, held in Cambridge, Brussels, and Munich), co-chaired the sixth International Congress on Construction History in Brussels in 2018, and is a founding member of the Brussels research group Construction Histories Brussels (CHsB) and the International Federation on Construction History, among others.