Biography

Eline Mestdagh is a historian and PhD researcher (FWO, 2017-2023) at the Department of History at Ghent University. Among her interests are the recent manifestations of memory activism in the Netherlands and in Belgium. In her Master thesis (2017), she investigated the uses of the past in the activism of Kick Out Zwarte Piet, a network of activists that mobilizes against the stereotypical figure of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in the Netherlands. Her current research deals with ongoing memory conflicts on the public (re)presentation of the Belgian colonial past, where she is specifically interested in the argumentative role of historical cultures and their underlying assumptions about time, historiography and the proper way to ‘deal with the past’. She is also a coördinating member of the interdisciplinary research forum TAPAS/Thinking About the PASt and a member of the International Network for the Theory of History (INTH).​

Contact

Ghent University, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Department of History
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35 (UFO)
9000 Gent
Room 130.005
09/331 02 88
Eline.Mestdagh@Ugent.be