Linde De Vroey

• Doctoral defence: 26 March 2026 at 1.30 p.m.
• Stadcampus Building R, room R.219 and online
• Supervisors: Herbert De Vriese and Geert Van Eekert
• ​Register by email by 20 March​

Abstract

This dissertation explores the philosophical, ethical, and political dimensions of rewilding, with a particular focus on the Scottish landscape. It consists of a series of related papers that collectively develop an ethical framework for understanding rewilding as a form of transformative change in modern society and culture. Discussing issues such as rewilding’s roots in the wilderness movement, nostalgia and re-enchantment, land ownership, and the integration of local culture and heritage in a ‘biocultural’ approach to rewilding, this dissertation reaches far beyond the ecological aspects of restoration but articulates how rewilding may (not) contribute to just environmental, political, and cultural transformation.

Rewilding has gained rapid popularity as a new, proactive approach to biodiversity restoration which promises to restore ecosystems, build climate resilience, ensure human wellbeing, and even deliver a paradigm shift in the human-nature relationship. But rewilding also raises a numbers of philosophical problems: from scientific unclarity over conceptual dualism to the ethical and political dimensions of transformative change. This thesis provides a critical exploration of these central issues in the rewilding debate. Engaging insights from theory and practice, it assesses common narratives that shaped the rewilding movement, uncovering rewilding’s value frameworks to assess the moral and political stakes of prevalent rewilding outlooks.

A central premise advanced in this thesis is that such assessments should always be made within specific contexts. Therefore the Scottish landscape takes the central stage in this dissertation. As a living reality, rich in various case-studies, Scotland’s contested landscape actively challenges and refines rewilding’s central theories and concepts. Rewilding’s transformative potential, this thesis asserts, is largely shaped by the alliances it forges (or refuses to forge) with these local narratives and structures that have (been) shaped (by) the landscape. This insight paves the way for a more place-based assessment of rewilding as a response to concrete ecological, cultural and political challenges, which always simultaneously possess a global and a local dimension. By highlighting the latter in relation to the former, the dissertation provides a new set of philosophical tools for (re)assessing the moral and political dilemmas faced by ecological restoration in historically contested landscapes.

Alessandra De Mulder

• Doctoral defence: 27 March 2026 at 2.30 p.m.
• Felixarchief
• Supervisors: Bruno Blondé and Ilja Van Damme

Abstract

This dissertation examines the emergence of modern consumer culture through the language of eighteenth-century London auction advertisements. By combining digital humanities methodologies with traditional historical analysis it uncovers what values actually mattered to Georgian consumers and shows that everyday linguistic practices of buying and selling played a crucial role in the consumer revolution.

This research nuances our understanding of the so-called consumer revolution by demonstrating that consumer culture emerged not simply through grand economic or social transformations but through everyday practices of buying, selling, and describing material goods; practices that were fundamentally linguistic by design. The focus on auction markets, where second-hand goods circulated amongst polite society, reveals that value construction depended increasingly on social conventions and aesthetic judgement rather than intrinsic material qualities alone.

Methodologically, the dissertation develops a framework that combines computational linguistic analysis with rigorous historical contextualisation. The research analyses thousands of auction advertisements from London newspapers spanning from 1730 to 1830. This approach reveals patterns invisible to traditional close reading whilst remaining grounded in historical context through contemporary dictionaries, furniture manuals, and philosophical treatises.

The study puts established narratives of eighteenth-century consumer culture in a different light by adopting an inductive approach. While historians have reconstructed what people owned through probate inventories and what intellectuals theorised through philosophical treatises, we still know remarkably little about why people chose to buy particular goods. Auction advertisements address this gap by capturing consumption in practice. Designed to resonate with buyers’ mental frameworks, they reveal the shared evaluative language that structured marketplace decision-making.

The study demonstrates that auctioneers functioned as active ‘arbiters of taste’ rather than passive intermediaries. They shaped shared evaluation frameworks that made certain consumption patterns successful whilst others faded. Their language evolved significantly across the eighteenth century, with evaluative (subjective) descriptions increasingly replacing purely descriptive (objective) language. Their evolving language charts the emergence of a more complex, refined consumer vocabulary that grew alongside the expanding world of goods.

Crucially, the study advocates for methodological humility, recognising both the power and limitations of digital approaches. No single method suffices: distant reading reveals broad patterns, intermediate reading through systematic annotation validates findings, and close reading through historical sources provides essential grounding. This multi-scalar approach acknowledges that different analytical methods reveal different facets of historical reality, with the richest insights emerging from their combination.

By bridging the gap between theoretical frameworks about consumer values and the actual linguistic evidence of marketplace practices, this study offers new perspectives on how Georgian Londoners navigated an increasingly complex material world, constructed meanings around household goods, and participated in the birth of modern consumer society through the language they used to describe, desire, and acquire objects.

Eleonora Paklons

• Doctoral defence: 2 April 2026 at 3 p.m.
• Grauwzusters, Barokzaal
• Supervisors: Kurt Vanhoutte and Thomas Smits
• ​Confirm your attendance by email before 25 March​

Abstract

This thesis argues that the magic lantern travelogue was a pivotal yet overlooked medium of spatial imagination in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western Europe. More than a precursor to cinema or a vehicle for visual entertainment, the lantern actively produced modern experiences of place. By merging projection, narration, and performance, it transformed spectatorship into an immersive encounter that compressed space and time, inviting audiences to inhabit virtual worlds from their local performance venues. In doing so, the magic lantern travelogue helped construct the frameworks through which Western Europeans understood the world and their position within it.

To illuminate these dynamics, the thesis moves through four key crossings of modernity. Chapter 1, on religion, examines competing visualizations of the Holy Land and shows how representing this sacred geography exposed religious and political tensions. Chapter 2, on tradition and heritage, investigates lantern performances by mayor Charles Buls to trace how engagements with antiquity shaped Belgian nation-building and linked virtual representations to material debates in urban planning. Chapter 3, on the occult, analyses George R. Tweedie’s supernatural lantern spectacles, showing how folklore and showmanship combined to legitimize and commercialize the occult. Chapter 4, on exploration, follows Olive Murray Chapman’s 1930s Iceland travelogues, revealing both the aspirations and the limits of a female reimagining of exploration at a moment of imperial uncertainty. The postscript brings the study to Paris, where Jean-Martin Charcot’s use of the lantern at the Salpêtrière hospital exposes the lantern’s disciplinary force – its capacity to magnetize and command – laying bare the power dynamics embedded in projection itself.

Together, these chapters demonstrate how lantern travelogues generated powerful virtual worlds that shaped cultural, political, and affective understandings of place. Across the case studies, the lantern emerges as an apparatus for projecting worlds into people’s minds – virtual worlds that were persuasive yet fragile, immersive yet internally conflicted. By showing how these virtual worlds shaped perceptions of religion, heritage, the occult, and exploration, the thesis reveals the tensions through which modernity imagined, doubted, and defined itself. Rather than reinforcing the material biases that have long dominated modernity studies, this thesis underlines the importance of mental and imaginative technologies such as the lantern. Ultimately, the lantern appears not as a minor precursor to later media but as one of modernity’s formative engines: a device that reshaped the modern mind by teaching audiences how to dream of worlds projected just beyond the screen’s edge.