Team
Directors
Christophe Verbruggen
Prof. dr. Christophe Verbruggen is director of the Ghent Centre for Digital humanities and associate professor at the research unit Social History since 1750. He is also a member of the Institute of Public History and the Centre for the History of Science at Ghent University. He directs DARIAH-VL/ [...] Read full biography
Codirectors
Els Lefever
Prof. dr. Els Lefever is co-director of the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and an assistant professor at the LT3 language and translation technology team at Ghent University. She has a master in Linguistics and Literature (Romance languages) and holds a PhD in computer science from Ghent University on ParaSense: Parallel Corpora for Word Sense Disambiguation (2012). She started her career as a computational linguist at the R&D-department of Lernout & Hauspie [...] Read full biography
Gunther Martens
Prof. dr. Gunther Martens is co-director of the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and Research Professor of German Literature and a member of the Literature Department at Ghent University. He has a Master in "Germanic Languages" (Ghent University, 1998) and a Master in Literary Studies (Antwerp University, 1999). In the period 2006-2010 he was Professor of Literary Theory at the Free University of Brussels and Professor of German Literature at [...] Read full biography
Coordinators
Sally Chambers
Sally Chambers is Digital Humanities Research Coordinator at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities. She is the first point of contact for researchers who are interested in using digital tools, methods and collections in their research. Sally provides advice and guidance on funding proposals with a digital component and on digital project management. She is the day-to-day coordinator of Belgian participation in DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and [...] Read full biography
Collaborators (technical background)
Hans Blomme
Hans Blomme is master in History (2010) and has been working for the GhentCDH since 2012. He maintained the Virtual Research Environment of TIC Collaborative and contributed to the development and use of analytical tools. He developed skills and knowledge of database systems and content management systems for historical research. Since 2013 he has been working as the Department of History’s policy officer “Historical cartography and historical data processing”. Next to [...] Read full biography
Frederic Lamsens
Frederic Lamsens is an application developer at GhentCDH. He joined the team in 2019, after working for 20 years at the IT department of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy where he developed web applications for research projects and faculty services. Frederic has a Master of Science in Computer Science (Ghent University, 1999).
Frederic is involved in the following projects:
- [...] Read full biography
Joren Six
Joren Six is a research software engineer with formal computer science background and a PhD in the field of Musicology. His research contributed to over 20 journal publications in fields ranging from music information retrieval over sports science to digital humanities. He currently focuses on development work at the GhentCDH core facility and specialises in developing collaborative text-corpus web-applications and research data modelling.
Collaborators (humanities background)
Julie Birkholz
Dr. Julie M. Birkholz is Assistant Professor Digital Humanities at UGent and Lead of the Royal Library of Belgium’s Digital Research Lab.
Her research expertise is in historical social network analysis. From 2017 – 2020 she was a DH Fellow on the ERC Agents of Change Research project [...] Read full biography
Fien Danniau
Fien Danniau is master in History (2005) and joined the team in 2018. As our public historian she focuses on collection management, digital storytelling, user interaction and education in digital humanities. She also functions as go-between for the heritage sector and advises on educational projects. Her work at the GhentCDH is complementary with her job as project manager and teaching assistant at the Institute for Public History (Ghent University) where since 2009 she [...] Read full biography
Rein Debrulle
Rein Debrulle is a MA in History (Ghent University, 2022). He worked as a student on the ‘Gent Gemapt’-project in 2021 and joined the GhentCDH team in 2022. As a scientific collaborator, he participated in the review and management of textual and cartographic content on Gent Gemapt. His current work focuses on the IIIF-standards, crowdsourcing and geospatial data.
Tess Dejaeghere
Tess Dejaeghere is a PhD student at GhentCDH who is currently working on the Computational Literary Studies (CLS) Horizon 2020 project, where she will be developing NLP workflows to apply to multilingual literary-historical data. After her studies in interpreting (VUB), Tess obtained an Advanced Masters degree in Digital Humanities (KULeuven) and a Masters degree in Digital Text Analysis (UAntwerpen) respectively, where she gained expertise in machine learning, AI and [...] Read full biography
Vincent Ducatteeuw
Vincent Ducatteeuw is a MA in History (Ghent University, 2020) and a MA in Education (Ghent University, 2020). As an educational historian his main interests involve public history, education and digital humanities. He joined GhentCDH in 2020 as research collaborator with a focus on digitization and data analysis. During this time he worked on two large-scale public history projects. The development of Cinema Belgica, an open access data platform for cinema history in [...] Read full biography
Lise Foket
Lise Foket holds a MA in History (Ghent University, 2020) and an Advanced Master in Digital Humanities (KULeuven, 2021). She joined the team of GhentCDH in 2021 as a research collaborator. As a Liaison Officer, her tasks include the coordination, communication and outreach of GhentCDH projects, mostly in the context of the CLARIAH-Flanders Open Humanities Research Infrastructure Project ( [...] Read full biography
Sytze Van Herck
Dr. Sytze Van Herck is the project lead for Madoc and Omeka S projects at GhentCDH since 2024. She is interested in digital research methods and enjoys building bridges between users and developers, between academia and a broader audience. She specializes in translating digital processes to human-centered language and prefers learning through experimenting.
She [...] Read full biography
Bas Vercruysse
Bas Vercruysse has a MA in History (Ghent University, 2023) and is currently completing a postgraduate study on Applied Artificial Intelligence (Howest). He joined the GhentCDH team in 2023 as a student and started as a junior researcher in 2024. His current work revolves around implementing computational methods (computer vision, data sience) in existing research processes varying from handwritten text recognition to image extraction (for example detecting comics in 20th [...] Read full biography
Former members
Cliff Beeckman
Cliff Beeckman was an application developer at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities (GhentCDH). He joined GhentCDH in 2018 and developed collaborative databases. Cliff has a Master of Science in Computer Science (Ghent University, 2007) and a Master of Philosophy (Ghent University, 2010). He formerly worked at the Belgian Data Protection Authority (previously known as the Privacycommission) as an Information Security Advisor.
Tamar Cachet
Tamar Cachet joined GhentCDH in 2018 to work on the CINECOS project, an open access data platform for cinema history in Flanders and Belgium. She holds an MA in History (Ghent University, 2014) and Public History (University of Western Ontario, Canada, 2015). In 2016-2017 she worked at the State Archives/CegeSoma where she developed www.belgiumWWII.be, an online platform on the history of Belgium during the Second World War.
Joke Daems
Joke Daems offered support on a faculty level (2017-2019) as a postdoctoral researcher, with a focus on digital language and text analysis. They created an overview of faculty researchers' needs and expertise and coordinated a digital text analysis platform as part of the DARIAH VRE-SI. They are assistant professor human-computer interaction in empirical translation & interpreting studies at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication.
Pieterjan De Potter
Pieterjan De Potter is an application developer at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities. He joined GhentCDH in 2017 and his current focus is the development of collaborative databases. Pieterjan has a Master of Science in Computer Science Engineering (Ghent University, 2008). He has a research background in semantic web technologies and has a wide practical experience in web application development.
Florian Deroo
Florian Deroo joined GhentCDH in 2019 and developed a virtual exhibition for the TIC project with the web publication platform Omeka S. He holds an MA in History (Ghent University, 2016) and an MA in Liberal Studies (The New School, 2019). In 2016-2017 he worked as a research assistant for TIC-Collaborative on international connections in the field of social reform.
Piraye Hacıgüzeller
Piraye Hacıgüzeller was a postdoctoral research assistant coordinating activities related to geospatial information, while continuing her research within the Department of Archaeology. She has a BSc degree in civil engineering (METU, Turkey), an MA degree in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology (KU Leuven) and a PhD in archaeology (UcL). She has previously researched the archaeological applications of GIS and digital mapping at KU Leuven and the University of Oxford.
Alec Van den broeck
Alec Van den broeck was a PhD student at IDLab and GhentCDH, currently working on the VKC Enriched project. Alec has a Master of Science in Computer Science with a major in Artificial Intelligence (Ghent University, 2020). His main interest is the application of computer vision techniques to annotate images and videos with metadata to facilitate and enrich the exploration of collections.
Davy Verbeke
Davy Verbeke joined GhentCDH in 2018 as scientific collaborator with an interest in the cross-over between DH and pedagogy. He holds an MA in History (Universiteit Gent, 2011), MA in English Literature (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2014) and a teacher certificate (CVO Kisp, 2013). He has worked on UGentMemorie (2016-2017) and for the Tervuren AfricaMuseum (2018).
Tecle Zere
Tecle Zere worked on the development of the Text platform at GhentCDH for DARIAH. He holds a PhD in the natural sciences and a postgraduate diploma in ICT from the University of the Free State in South Africa. He has over 10 years experience as an ICT expert in the heritage sector, but also as a researcher and data expert. He also contributed to the collaborative databases and pilot projects. Tecle worked part-time for Amsab-Institute of Social History.