Team
The research group is led by Wouter Davidts and consists of Camille Bladt (junior), Laura Bovsòvers-Carette (junior), Koen Brams (senior), Anton Pereira Rodriguez (PhD) en Stefaan Vervoort (postdoc).
Wouter Davidts
Wouter Davidts is a lecturer at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, as well as the Department of Art, Music and Theater Sciences of Ghent University (UGent). He publishes on the museum, art and architecture and is the author of two books on museum architecture, Bouwen voor de kunst? (2006) and Triple Bond (2017). He is the editor of The Fall of the Studio (2009) and Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office: Orban Space (2012; with Stefaan Vervoort and Guy Châtel). He curated The Corner Show (2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten). In recent years, Davidts has worked closely with the Ghent University Library in the acquisition and management of archives of important Belgian artists (Philippe Vandenberg, René Heyvaert). His current research focuses, among other things, on the reception of American art and artists in the low countries in the post-war period.
Koen Brams
Koen Brams is an independent researcher, curator and publicist. He is the former director of the Jan van Eyck Academy (2000-2011) and the former editor-in-chief of De Witte Raaf (1991 to 2000).
Recent exhibitions: The breakthrough of 'conceptual art' in Belgium. The case of Fernand Spillemaeckers. Part 1: Towards a 'Marxist Formalism' (in collaboration with Dirk Pültau), in Museum M (Leuven, 2013); Jef Cornelis - TV works, in the context of the Liverpool Biennial 2014; and 'Believe in your time' - Karel J. Geirlandt and the Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art (1957-1960), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, 2019); «PLUS» and Yves De Smet. Ideology, camaraderie, and rivalry on the playing field of Ghent art between 1965 and 1970, Convent (Ghent, 2022); Celbeton Dendermonde 1957–75. Sanctuary for art and criticism, (Dendermonde, 2023).
His current research concerns, among other things, the history of the Museum of Contemporary Art / S.M.A.K (Ghent, 1957-2000) and the collaboration between René Magritte and Marcel Mariën in the period between 1940 and 1955.
Stefaan Vervoort
Stefaan Vervoort is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Art, Music and Theater Sciences at Ghent University. He teaches at the Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool in Antwerp. He holds a Bachelor and Master degree in Engineering: Architecture (UGent) and a Master of Philosophy in Visual Arts, Media and Architecture (VU University Amsterdam). He defended his PhD on architectural models in the visual arts at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of Ghent University in 2020.
Vervoort is editor of three books about Belgian artists or artists working in Belgium: Aglaia Konrad from A to K (edited with Emiliano Battista, 2016); Raymond Barion (edited with Mihnea Mircan & Stijn Maes, 2014); and Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office: Orban Space (edited with Wouter Davidts & Guy Châtel, 2012). He is the author of various scientific articles and book chapters and as an art critic has written many exhibition and book reviews. His research focuses on the exchange between art and architecture and the relationship between sculpture and language, specifically in the period after 1968.
Anton Pereira Rodriguez
Anton Pereira Rodriguez is a PhD student at the Department of Art, Music and Theater Sciences at UGent. His doctoral research, entitled A Belgian artist in Italy: Italian Art History and Culture in the Work of Jan Vercruysse (1948-2018), focuses on the artistic and institutional interplay between the Belgian and Italian art scene of the late 1980s and years '90, with Jan Vercruysse as a key figure (UGent - University of Verona). As a voluntary employee at the Jan Vercruysse Foundation, he is involved with drawing up an inventory of the extensive archive of Jan Vercruysse and contributing to the catalog raisonné.
In 2018 he helped to enclose the archive of the artist René Heyvaert, after which he wrote a chapter for the catalog of Heyvaert's exhibition at CGAC in Santiago de Compostela together with Wouter Davidts.
Pereira Rodriguez studied architecture at Luca School of Arts, Ghent campus (KULeuven) and subsequently art sciences at UGent. During the academic year 2016-2017 he studied Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin and did an internship at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art.
Camille Bladt
Camille Bladt (°1996) is a researcher at the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Sciences at Ghent University. In 2020 she contributed to the publication Maisons d’art moderne. Private Collections in Belgium, 1945-1980 (edited by Steven Jacobs and Maarten Liefooghe, 2020).
Bladt studied Art History at Ghent University, where she wrote her master thesis on the architectural practice and private collection of Liège architect Charles Vandenhove. She continued her studies in the postgraduate programme Curatorial Studies at KASK & CONSERVATORIUM School of Arts Ghent. During the academic year 2017-2018 she studied Art History at the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna.
Laura Bovsòvers-Carette
Laura Bovsovers-Carette is a researcher at the Department of Art, Music and Theater Sciences at Ghent University. She holds a master’s degree in Art History and Education in cultural sciences from the University of Ghent (2015-2019). Her thesis ‘The loss of the center in the visual arts of the 1970’s’ discussed two exhibtions: Sonsbeek buiten de perken (1971) and Ici/Hier, Ailleurs/Elders, Désormais/Vanaf by Daniel Buren (1976). For multiple years she was a member of The Mobile and Temporary Studio for Research and Production, a research group initiated and coordinated by Koen Brams.
Eléa De Winter
Eléa De Winter studied art history at Ghent University (2021). Since October 2023 she is preparing a PhD ‘The Belgian art market in the pre-, war and post-war period 1933–1960: Brussels and Antwerp’ at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in collaboration with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Technische Universität Berlin and CegeSoma. Her doctoral project is part of the ProvEnhance project – Enhancing the provenance data of the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB) since 1933. Scientific study, digital valorization and narrative in context (BELSPO Brain).
Between 2020 and 2023 Eléa contributed as a junior researcher to short and long-term academic art historical projects and publications (Documenta and Stadsgeschiedenis), focusing primarily on the intersection of contemporary art, cultural policy, and urban development during the second half of the 20th century. She was the curator of the archival exhibition Opting for Art. Three contemporary visual art exhibitions during Antwerp 93 (Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp, October 2023 – May 2024). She is guest editor at the art critical magazine De Witte Raaf for a thematic issue on the Art Market (July 2025).
Eléa is an affiliated researcher at the research groups Brussels Art Markets Laboratory (BAMLab, ULB) and Art in Belgium since 1945 (KB45, Ghent University). Her main research interests are art markets, provenance research and questions related to data driven and digital art history.
Eléa De Winter graduated as an art historian at Ghent University (2021) with a thesis on the photographic portraits and studio images of Philippe Vandenberg. She is currently preparing a doctoral project on the interplay between visual art, cultural policy, and urban urban regeneration in Antwerp between 1980 and 2000.
Ine Engels
Ine Engels is a PhD student at the Department of Art, Music and Theater Sciences at UGent. Her doctoral research, Towards the Transnational in Art History: Argentine Artists in Belgium and Beyond, 1967–1981, focuses on the cultural exchange between Argentina and Belgium and the subsequent border-crossing activities of Argentine artists in Europe during the postwar period.
Engels obtained a master's degree in Linguistics and Literature: English - Spanish, followed by a master's in Art History, both at Ghent University. During the 2017–2018 academic year, she spent six months studying at the Universitat de València. In 2020, she completed an internship at FORUM+, a journal for research and the arts in the Low Countries.