Service

Referee Work

Conferences Organized

  • Organizer of LITRA/CMSI lecture series (featuring Anne Whitehead, Shane Graham, Robert Eaglestone, Michael Rothberg, Sam Durrant, Roger Luckhurst, Efraim Sicher, Andreas Huyssen, Rick Crownshaw, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Geoffrey Hartman, Anna Mae Duane, Lewis Kirshner, Chris van der Merwe, Vladimir Biti, Evelyne Ledoux-Beaugrand, Yasemin Yildiz, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Kristina Langarika, Dawn Skorczewksi, Klaas Smelik, Eugene Arva, Marguérite Corporaal, Brigitte Adriaensen, Esther Peeren, Sue Vice, Ann Rigney, Sarah Casteel, Bryan Cheyette, Magdalena Zolkos, Michelle Kelly, Catherine Gilbert, Lucero de Vivanco, Julia Round, Debora Silverman, Lucy Bond, Emilie Pine, Paul Saint-Amour, Susanne Knittel, Matthias De Groof, Jesse Oak Taylor, Dirk Moses, Sarah Gensburger, Clement Emeka Akpang, Vandana Saxena, Francesca Billiani, Rebekah Vince, Sraddha Shivani Rajkomar, and Giacomo Lichtner), 2008-present
  • Co-organizer (with Marco Caracciolo) of “Imagining Environmental Futures” symposium, Ghent University, 9 December 2024
  • Co-organizer of “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75: Rethinking and Constructing Its Future Together” conference, Ghent University, 6-8 December 2023
  • Co-convenor (with An Cliquet and Hendrik Schoukens) of “Climate Justice” stream of “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75: Rethinking and Constructing Its Future Together” conference, Ghent University, 6-8 December 2023
  • Co-organizer (with Gert Buelens et al.) of specialist course “Representations of Violence in Literature and Other Media,” Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 4-5 May 2023
  • Co-organizer (with An Cliquet et al.) of hot-topic lecture “Climate Racism: An Intersectional Perspective on Social Movements,” Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 2 May 2023
  • Organizer of “Meet the PhD Jury” event with Dolly Jørgensen, Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 6 October 2022
  • Co-organizer of “Contemporary Literature and the Environmental Imagination” conference, Ghent University, 29 November – 1 December 2021
  • Co-organizer of “Writing Transitional Justice: A Conversation with Antjie Krog,” Ghent, 20 October 2021
  • Convenor of “dMSA: Careers in Memory Studies,” online interactive event, Memory Studies Association, 17 March 2021
  • Co-organizer (with Jelena Juresa and Marte Van Hassel) of “Arts of Oblivion” symposium, KASK School of Arts, Ghent, 19-20 March 2020 [cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Co-organizer (with Stef Slembrouck and Sonia Vandepitte) of 2019 BAAHE conference, Ghent University, 19 December 2019: convenor of stream on “Decolonizing English Literature”
  • Organizer of lecture by Elizabeth DeLoughrey, “Toward a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene,” Ghent University, 21 October 2019
  • Review committee member, Memory Studies Association conference, Madrid, Spain, 25-28 June 2019
  • Organizer of “Meet the PhD Jury” event with Heather Houser, Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 19 December 2018
  • Co-organizer (with Silvana Mandolessi and Pieter Vermeulen) of 2018 Mnemonics Summer School “Ecologies of Memory” at KU Leuven, Belgium, 22-24 August 2018
  • Co-organizer (as member of MLA Memory Studies forum executive committee) of “Refugee Memory” session and “Remembering the World in Early Modern Europe” session at 2018 MLA convention, New York, USA, 4-7 January 2018
  • Organizing committee member, “Comics and Memory” conference, Ghent University, 19-21 April 2017
  • Co-organizer (as chair of MLA Memory Studies forum executive committee) of “Memory Studies and the Anthropocene” roundtable (chair) and “Alternate Histories / Alternate Memories” session at 2017 MLA convention, Philadelphia, USA, 5-8 January 2017
  • Co-organizer (with Holly Brown) of PhD symposium “Questions of Scale in Contemporary Literature and Criticism,” Ghent University, 23-25 March 2016
  • Co-organizer (as secretary of MLA Memory Studies forum executive committee) of “Are Memories (Ever Not) Preformed?” roundtable and “Memory and Migration” session at 2016 MLA convention, Austin, USA, 7-10 January 2016
  • Co-organizer (with Sean Bex and Eva Brems) of specialist course “Human Rights and the Mobilization of Testimony,” Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 15-17 June 2015
  • Co-organizer (with Christine Kanz, Benjamin Biebuyck, and Pierre Schoentjes) of specialist course “Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene,” Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities, and Law, Ghent University, 29 April – 1 May 2015
  • Coordinator of seminar series on “New Trends in Cultural Memory Studies” for Flemish Inter-University Advanced MA Programme in Literary Studies, taught by Ann Rigney at Ghent University, 21-24 April 2015
  • Co-organizer (with Lucy Bond, Rick Crownshaw, and Jessica Rapson) of “The Natural History of Memory” symposium at Ghent University, 30 June – 1 July 2014
  • Organizer of 2013 Mnemonics Summer School “Memory Unbound” at Ghent University, 9-11 September 2013
  • Organizer of Postmemory Seminar with Marianne Hirsch at Ghent University, 13 December 2012
  • Organizer of Internationalisation@Home lecture series “Memory Unbound” at Ghent University, October – December 2012 (featuring Max Silverman, Andrew Hoskins, Jeffrey Olick, and Marianne Hirsch)
  • Co-convenor (with Antony Rowland) of seminar “The Other Witness? Imagining the Perpetrator” at 2012 ESSE conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 4-8 September 2012
  • Organizer of Multidirectional Memory Workshop with Michael Rothberg and Yasemin Yildiz at Ghent University, 28 March 2012
  • Organizer of Cultural Memory Seminar with Andreas Huyssen at Ghent University, 23 February 2011
  • Co-organizer (with Michael Rothberg) of seminar (i.e., three two-hour sessions) “Creolizing Memory: Transnational Remembrance of Trauma and Violence” at ACLA 2010 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, USA, 1-4 April 2010
  • Co-organizer (with Gert Buelens) of “Literature and the Memory of Catastrophe: A Symposium” at Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brussels, 29-30 May 2009
  • Co-organizer (with Gert Buelens) and respondent of special session “Trauma, Narrative, and the Postcolonial” at 2006 MLA convention, Philadelphia, USA, 27-30 December 2006
  • Co-organizer (with Gert Buelens, Sigi Jöttkandt, Benjamin Biebuyck, and Ortwin de Graef) of “Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics” conference, Ghent University, 21-23 April 2005
  • Organizing committee member, Graduate Research Colloquium (“Doctorandicolloquium”), Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, 8 December 2004

Network Building

  • Director of the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative (CMSI), formerly the Centre for Literature and Trauma (LITRA), 2010-present. CMSI is a vibrant research group at Ghent University that brings together scholars from across the humanities whose research revolves around memory and trauma as mediated through culture. As director, I coordinate the initiative’s various activities (including a lecture series featuring prominent external speakers and a seminar series as well as a wide range of occasional events such as workshops, panels, conferences, and museum visits), oversee its outreach and communication efforts, host visiting scholars, and manage interns.
  • Founding coordinator of Mnemonics: Network for Memory Studies, a collaborative initiative for doctoral education in memory studies between the Danish Network for Cultural Memory Studies, the Flemish Memory Studies Network, the London Cultural Memory Consortium, the Swedish Memory Studies Network, and programmes at Goethe University Frankfurt, UC Irvine, UCLA, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Utrecht University, and Columbia University, 2011-present
  • Mentor for the DFG-funded research project “Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene,” University of Vechta, Germany, 2024-2026
  • Secondary proposer and working group member for COST Action “SHiFT: Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience” (CA21166), 2022-2026
  • Co-chair of working group “Transformation of the Environment” (2021-2024; elected), secondary proposer, and management committee member for COST Action “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” (CA20105), 2021-2025
  • Member of the advisory board for the ERC Starting Grant project “Conspiratorial Memory: Cultures of Suspicion in Post-Socialist Europe,” University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2021-2025
  • Member of the executive board (2019-2021; elected) and the advisory board (2016-2019; 2021-present) of the Memory Studies Association
  • Member of the executive committee of the MLA Memory Studies forum (2015-2018; chair 2016-2017); elected to the MLA Delegate Assembly (2016-2019)
  • Management committee and working group member for COST Action “In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe” (IS1203), 2012-2016
  • Member of “The Natural History of Memory” network, which has organized seminars on intersections of memory studies and environmental humanities in London, Ghent, and Maastricht, 2014-present
  • Initiator of and participant in the international collaborative research cluster “Whither Trauma Theory? Debating the Future of Literary Research on the Memory of Catastrophe” hosted and funded by the Flemish Academic Centre for Science and the Arts (VLAC), a Brussels-based institute of advanced study, in the spring of 2009. Other fellows: Gert Buelens, Ortwin de Graef, Sam Durrant, Robert Eaglestone, Roger Luckhurst, and Michael Rothberg

Public Outreach

  • Participant in panel discussion on the occasion of the public presentation of the report “Het klimaatdebat in Vlaanderen: Een analyse van taal en communicatie”, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brussels, 17 April 2024
  • Participant in panel discussion “Dare to Care: De rol van emoties in de klimaatcrisis” for Gentse Alumni Psychologie and Green Office Ghent, Ghent University, 20 March 2024
  • Consultant for guided tour “Kan kunst het klimaat redden?” (“Can Art Save the Climate?”) at Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK), 2023
  • Lecture on “Literatuur in tijden van klimaatverandering” for Amarant, 27 March 2023 (via Zoom)
  • Lecture on “Kan literatuur het klimaat redden?” for Alumni Day, Ghent University, 26 March 2023
  • Information booth on the valorization project “Literature and Human Rights” of the UGent Human Rights Research Network (preparatory dossiers on human rights-themed literary texts for reading group facilitators), VRT Human Rights Day during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Wintercircus, Ghent, 11 December 2022
  • Member of organizing team for Human Rights Week, Ghent University, 5-9 December 2022
  • Interviewed about the removal of a colonial statue and decolonization in Belgium more broadly for “Stap per stap door de dekolonisatie: Een audiowalk in het hartje van Gent met Eryckah Sway,” UNYA Gent, Ghent, launched on 18 November 2022
  • Co-organizer (with Zoë Ghyselinck) of “Rouw na corona: Betekenisvol herdenken,” an evening of panel discussions on cultural mourning practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (guests: Alexander Devriendt, Tessa Kerre, Farnoosh Khodadadeh, Uus Knops, Barbara Raes, and Gaea Schoeters), De Krook public library, Ghent, 15 November 2022 [watch video]
  • Co-facilitator (with Mahlu Mertens) of workshop on “Searching for Utopia: Degrowth Imaginaries in Literature and Other Media” for a student-initiated interdisciplinary summer school on degrowth, Ghent University, 19-23 September 2022
  • Coach of “In Hot Pursuit,” a staff and student reading marathon at Ghent University around the figure of the detective in the Anglophone literary canon organized by English literature students, 10 May 2022
  • Participant in panel discussion at “Gent in Zee,” an alternative climate festival organized by Extinction Rebellion, Ghent, 8 May 2022
  • Co-coordinator of the valorization project “Literature and Human Rights” of the UGent Human Rights Research Network (preparatory dossiers on human rights-themed literary texts for reading group facilitators), 2021-present; launched at De Krook public library, Ghent, 5 May 2022
  • Moderator of “Geboekt op zondag: Annelies Verbeke en Jens Meijen over Over over morgen: Andere verhalen over de toekomst,” Vooruit Arts Centre, Ghent, 28 November 2021 [postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Panellist at “Naar een dekoloniale bibliotheek: Een aftrapdebat,” “Literatuur en dekolonisatie” debate series, Ghent University, 24 November 2021 (online) [watch video]
  • Panellist at book launch of Over over morgen: Andere verhalen over de toekomst, a collection of hopeful short stories about the future by ten Flemish and Dutch literary authors, Ghent, 22 September 2021
  • Lecture on “De literaire verbeelding van de klimaatverandering” for a student-initiated interdisciplinary summer school on climate change, Ghent University, 20-24 September 2021
  • Lecture on “Klimaatpijn in de kunsten” for “Leergang Klimaatpsychologie, Deel 1: Van begrip naar actie,” ImpactAcademy in collaboration with Klimaat Psychologie Alliantie Nederland, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 3 June 2021 [postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Organizer of “Writing Trauma: An Evening with Aminatta Forna” at De Krook public library, Ghent, 12 May 2021 [cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Organizer of student Q&A with Aminatta Forna at Ghent University, 11 May 2021 [cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Contributor to “Literature / History / Human Rights,” a public-facing online reading project at the University of Tromsø, Norway, 2020-2021
  • Lecture on “Klimaatfictie: Trends en impact,” 2084: De toekomst is hoopvol inspiration day, 27 January 2021 (online) [watch video]
  • Partner of 2084: De toekomst is hoopvol, a Flemish government-funded project led by Greentrack Gent commissioning Flemish and Dutch writers to create positive stories about the future, 2020-2021
  • Interview with Moya De Feyter about poetry collection Zwemlessen voor later by Klimaatdichters for Beeldspraak, podcast of Poëziecentrum, Ghent, 15 December 2020
  • Co-initiator of petition urging Ghent University to declare climate emergency, which was signed by more than 1800 members of the UGent community and, on 11 September 2020, led to the Board of Governors committing the university to taking action in line with what is considered scientifically necessary to prevent disastrous climate change
  • Organizer of virtual Q&A session with Aminatta Forna at Ghent University, 14 May 2020
  • Inspiration session on teaching climate change literature, Inspiration and Networking Day “Sustainability in Teaching at Ghent University,” Ghent University, 23 March 2020 [cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Co-organizer of “Traag geweld: Kan kunst het klimaat redden?” Happening on art, literature, and climate change (featuring Alexander Devriendt, Nic Balthazar, Moya De Feyter, Christel Stalpaert, and Hind Eljadid) at Vooruit Arts Centre, Ghent, 18 March 2020 [cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
  • Co-organizer of climate change writing competition for upper secondary school and higher education students in Ghent (with the Prometheus student society; jury members: Stef Craps, Kyra Gantois, Tine Heyse, Lieke Marsman, Mahlu Mertens, Yves T’Sjoen, Lena Vercauteren, Pauline Verleyen), 2019-2020
  • Coach of “Connected by Blood,” a staff and student reading marathon at Ghent University around the vampire figure organized by English literature students, 3 December 2019
  • Participant in “Raak!” session at #daaromleesik festival, De Krook public library, Ghent, 21-23 November 2019 [listen to audio]
  • Ambassador (“stadslezer”) for Gent Leest, Ghent public library’s reading community project, 2019-present
  • Train-the-trainer session on climate change literature targeted at secondary school teachers (“Kan literatuur het klimaat redden?”), Educatief aanbod voor leerlingen en leerkrachten, Ghent University, 2019-present
  • Initiator and coordinator of English literature reading group at De Krook public library, Ghent, 2019-present: annual series of five sessions led by members of the English section of the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University
  • Lecture on “De literaire verbeelding van de klimaatverandering” for a student-initiated interdisciplinary summer school on climate change, Ghent University, 16-20 September 2019
  • Initiator and coach of Frankenstein Reading Marathon, a staff and student reading marathon at Ghent University organized by English literature students to celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, 4 December 2018
  • Member of the general assembly (“Algemene Vergadering”) of Iedereen Leest, the Flemish organization for reading promotion, 2017-present
  • Public lecture (in Dutch) on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame for the continuing education (“permanente vorming”) programme “Great Plays” at Ghent University, 10 May 2016
  • Video interview about collective memory for the documentary theatre production Mining Stories by Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, 20 April 2016
  • Public interview with Dave Eggers and Mimi Lok at Vooruit Arts Centre, Ghent, 18 March 2015 (conducted jointly with Sean Bex)
  • Public lecture (in Dutch) on Ian McEwan’s novel Solar for the continuing education (“permanente vorming”) programme “Contemporary Literature: Literature and Ecology” at Ghent University, 2 December 2014, audio recording available here
  • Initiator and co-organizer of De Groote Oorlog Voorgelezen, a staff and student reading marathon at Ghent University to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War, 13 November 2014
  • Public interview with director Peter Krüger, author Ben Okri, and composer Walter Hus after the premiere of N: The Madness of Reason at Film Fest Gent, Vooruit Arts Centre, Ghent, 16 October 2014
  • Contributor to Ikhebeenvraag.be, a science communication website that aims to answer questions by the general public, 2014-present
  • Organizer (with Klaas Smelik) of public interview with Aharon Appelfeld at Ghent University, 20 May 2014
  • Introduction to launch of poetry collection Her Book by Éireann Lorsung at Poëziecentrum, Ghent, 10 October 2013
  • Member of working group “Contemporary Literature,” which organizes the continuing education (“permanente vorming”) programme “Contemporary Literature” at Ghent University (“Literature and Terror” 2013-2014; “Literature and Ecology” 2014-2015; “Literature and Migration” 2015-2016; “Literature and Sexuality” 2016-2017; “Literary Alumni” 2017-2018; “Out of the Books” 2018-2019; “Literary Duets” 2019-2020; “Better than the Movie?” 2020-2021)
  • Organizer of public reading by and interview with Chika Unigwe at Ghent University, 26 March 2013
  • Member of jury for Text Message Poetry Contest organized by Ghent University, 2011, 2017
  • Video interview about visiting scholar experience at Columbia University for Fulbright, 2010