Team

Prof. Laurent Bavay holds the chair of Egyptian archaeology at the Université libre de Bruxelles since 2008, including archaeological methods and fieldschools in Belgium and France. With extensive fieldwork experience in Egypt, his current research focuses on the Theban necropolis, where he leads the joint ULB and Liège University mission studying a group of New Kingdom monumental tombs and their later reuses. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Director of the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo.

Jean-Michel Bruffaerts is a historian trained at the Université Saint-Louis (Brussels) and the UC Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve). He began his career as a researcher at CRISP (Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques, Brussels).  He is the author of publications on the history of the Belgian dynasty (including a biography of Edmond Carton de Wiart, the last chief of staff of King Leopold II) and publications focusing on Jean Capart and the history of Belgian Egyptology. In 2016, he was closely associated with the creation of the Jean Capart Fund, whose aim is to safeguard and promote the work and historical heritage of the founder of Belgian Egyptology. Within P&P, he is finalizing a biography of Jean Capart.

Mathieu Geeraerts obtained a BA Librarian and Documentalist from the Institut Lallemand in 2019. He joins P&P as a documentalist. As one of his primary tasks, he will be in charge of the digitisation of the archives kept at the RMAH.

Gert Huskens obtained a MA in History at KU Leuven following a dissertation on Belgian imperialism and diplomacy in China in the era of the Boxer War. Additionally, he acquired an MSc in Comparative and International Politics at the same institution analysing civil society participation in contemporary debates on international development. Combining his expertises as historian and political scientist, Huskens primarily looks at histories of colonialism, expansionism, imperialism, decolonization and postcolonialism. He also contributes regularly to postcolonial debates in Belgian and Dutch media. Within P&P, his PhD focuses on ‘Belgian diplomatic representatives in Egypt before WW1 and the making of Egyptology’.

Joffrey Liénart earned a Master's degree in History at the Université libre de Bruxelles with a thesis on Belgian genealogists (1830-1970). He worked as an archivist at the European Commission and at the  State Archives of Belgium. He has also been a researcher at the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions and Secularism (CIERL). Within the P&P project, Joffrey will be cataloguing the archival fonds held at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, thus rendering these primary sources accessible for further research.

Dorian Vanhulle holds a PhD in Egyptology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles thanks to a fellowship of the F.R.S.-FNRS. His research focuses on the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods and on the Egyptian collection of the RMAH. Guest lecturer at Namur University in 2018, he is a member of the Belgian mission in the Theban Necropolis (ULB/ULg), of the archaeological mission in Tell el-Iswid (IFAO), and of the Elkab Desert Survey Project (Yale University). In the context of his post-doctoral position within P&P, he is currently working on Leopold II’s collection of Egyptian antiquities.

Eugène Warmenbol is professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where he teaches the archaeology of the Bronze and the Iron Age in Northwestern Europe, with a special focus on what Julius Caesar called Gallia belgica. His career begun on the field in Syria and Egypt, and he wrote his doctoral thesis on the early collections, and collectors, of Egyptian antiquities in Belgium. On this theme, he published “Le lotus et l’oignon. Egyptologie et égyptomanie en Belgique au XIXe siècle" in 2012. The study of the reception of Antiquity has been, and still is, a recurring theme in his research.