I am the Communications Officer for the History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland, and editor-at-large of The Dutch Review of Books where I contribute essays on history, economy, and (memory) politics. I’ve worked as a researcher in several art institutions, the University of Oxford, the National Bank of Belgium, the Catholic University of Leuven, and University College London (Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe). My first book, Het gestolde land (2016) was an economic history of Belgium. Raaf (2022) is a cultural history of Europe’s most controversial bird, the raven.
Recent published work have focused on transnational pilgrimage cultures, the role of the supernatural in nineteenth-century debates on science and religion, gendered roles and the archives of women religious who bore the stigmata.
My main research interests are magic, the supernatural and the occult, and their connections to the histories of religion, science and folklore, as well as their historiography and their archive history. For the Contested Bodies project, I examine post-mortuary cultures of extraordinary Catholic bodies in Britain, Ireland and Belgium.
You can find me on Twitter: @kristof_smeyers
History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland 