Christoph De Spiegeleer

Christoph De Spiegeleer studied History at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Leiden University. He obtained his PhD in modern history at the VUB. He is active as Research fellow of Liberas (Ghent), a heritage and research centre for the history of the liberal movement and the freedom ideal in Belgium. One of Liberas’ lines of research focuses on the freedom of conscience and the relationship between religion and state from a historical perspective. He is further affiliated to VUB as associate professor. Within his line of research at Liberas, he has published widely on Church-State conflicts and the secularisation of attitudes toward death and funerary culture. He has a particular interest in the involvement of the liberal movement, the freethinkers’ movement and Freemasonry in the laicization of the public sphere and the secularization of social behaviour during the long 19^th century. He edited different publications in the field of secular studies, with volumes devoted to the history of educational reform, funerary reform and atheism in Belgium within a broader European perspective. He is appointed guest lecturer in the Master History at the VUB and serves as secretary of the history section of the editorial board of the Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS IN THE FIELD OF SECULAR STUDIES

• "‘Funerary Culture Wars’ in Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Europe and the Case of the Brussels’ Freethought Movement", Secular Studies, 4, 2022, 1, pp. 9-41.
• " 'Le péril d’une Belgique vaticane'. L’œuvre anticléricale de l’ex-prêtre Jules Bosmans (1853–1928) et l’anticatholicisme en Belgique au début du XXe siècle", Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis, LII, 2022, 3, pp. 8-32.
• Christoph De Spiegeleer & Patrice Dartevelle (ed.), De geschiedenis van het atheïsme in België (Ghent: Liberas/Skribis, 2021) (with a contribution on the role of atheism in the 19^th-century freethinkers’ movement in Brussels).
• Secularization and the modern history of funerary culture in Europe. Conflict and market competition around death, burial and cremation”, Trajecta. Religion, Culture and Society in the Low Countries, 28, 2019, 2, pp. 169-201.
• Christoph De Spiegeleer (ed.). The Civilising Offensive. Social and Educational Reform in 19th-Century Belgium. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2019.
• Christoph De Spiegeleer (ed.). ‘New Perspectives on the Secularisation of Attitudes towards Death and Funerary Practices in 19^th- and 20^th-Century Europe’, themanummer Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 95, 2017, 4, pp. 833-988 (with a contribution on the the development of a secularist funerary culture in 19^th-century Belgium).
• "Charles Potvin (1818-1902) en de progressistische politieke cultuur",  Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 91, 2013, 2,  pp. 387-425.