Urban planning, materials-water relation,  tracking water, building management, co-creation, cultural heritage, climate resilience, water history, green cities

Research groups

Key experts

Selected projects

  • CLIMPACTH: Impact of climate change on (historic) buildings on the basis of humidity 

  • Digital Heritage for Smart Regions: Time Machine Herentals – Kleine Nete: a ‘pipeline’ for digital landscape history, with an online viewer, focused on the history of a river. 

  • EPIBEL: History of epidemics and inequality, water infrastructure is important for waterborne diseases

  • CLARIAH: the integration of historical maps and place-names in open databases 

  • Seas of Risk and Resilience: peasant fishing on the late medieval English coasts as a coping strategy against climate-induced hazards 

  • Questioning water modernity. A GIS-approach to the privatization and resilience of common drinking water systems in 16th- and 19thcentury cities, test-case: Antwerp. 

  • Doel, polder village. Its inhabitants and built environment since 1600. 

  • Water related heritage of the river Dommel

  • Bringingnatureback: investigates the hydrological and ecological values of ponds and ditches that have been constructed over the past 20 years. These ponds and ditches were primarily designed for water storage and flood control and are often too deep. The project will propose solutions. 

  • Upsurge: to help European cities enter the regenerative transition pathway, UPSURGE will provide an EU Urban Regenerative Lighthouse to serve as a reference framework and a reference network to accelerate, transfer and upscale the use of nature based solutions and mainstream them into the agenda of urban policies through co-creation and co-design processes with  citizens and other stakeholders.

  • Ecocities: investigates the use of green walls and roofs as source for ecosystemservices in future cities.