Our dear colleague Anse De Weerdt (ULB & University of Antwerp) will publicly defend her PhD at the ULB campus.
Date: 27 November – 14:00
Location: UD.6.215, Building D – Solbosch Campus
Entrance: free, but register by sending an email to anse.de.weerdt@ulb.be or anse.deweerdt@uantwerpen.be
Title of dissertation: The Politics of Light: Colonial Power, Knowledge Transmission, and The Magic Lantern in Belgium (1885–1945)
Between 1885 and 1945, Belgian and other Western European travellers returning from colonial territories frequently brought back photographs taken with portable Kodak cameras. These images were transformed into glass slides for projection using the Magic Lantern. The resulting lantern lectures were public performances that blended personal narrative, spectacle, and claims to scientific expertise. In organizations such as the Royal Geographical Society of Antwerp (est. 1876) and the Union Coloniale Belge (est. 1912), speakers and audiences together participated in establishing scientific authority. Lecturers, institutions, and attendees mutually reinforced one another's credibility, staging knowledge as simultaneously spectacle and collective consensus. By tracing these practices, this dissertation explores how colonial imaginaries were produced and sustained through recurring visual and performative formats. It examines these events as social occasions that connected members of the colonial establishment and helped reproduce notions of hierarchy and empire. Combining approaches from performance studies, visual history, and the history of knowledge, the dissertation investigates how light itself became integral to the machinery of colonial power.
For more information on Anse's research, visit the B-magic website.