Niels De Nutte

Niels De Nutte holds a PhD in History from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2025). In 2019, he completed a postgraduate program Laïcité et Société at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research interests relate to the history of organised humanism, both in Belgium and abroad, and to that of bioethical issues. His doctoral work added the history of the issue of euthanasia to the Belgian historiography and brought into focus significant transnational dimensions, related to notions such as therapeutic tenacity and advanced care directives, as well. His research was awarded with a special PhD scholarship From the Flemish National Research Foundation. He spent time as a visiting researcher at the Special Collections Archives of the University of Washington in Seattle (2023) and the Wellcome Library in London (2024).

He is an associate director at ISHASH and associate editor of Secular Studies. He was appointed program coordinator  in the postgraduate program Praktisch Humanisme from 2021 to 2023 and teaches several subjects in this program.

Apart from SSAB, Niels serves as secretary to the Brussels Centre for Religious Studies (BCRS) and the Belgian Association for Religious Studies (Babel).

He is currently affiliated to Odisee University College as a program coordinator and researcher and to the Union of Secular Associations (deMens.nu) as a researcher.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Niels De Nutte and Bert Gasenbeek, eds., Looking Back to Look Forward: Organised Humanism in the World. Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States of America (Brussels: VUBPress, 2019), 172p.
• Niels De Nutte and Anton Van Dyck, “Using data to combat religious persecution. The Freedom of Thought Report,” in International Journal for Religious Freedom 12, 1-2 (2019); 45-54.
• “So to live, one that one has also at the right time one’s will to death! Humanist euthanasia advocacy in Flanders between the 1970s and 1990s. A story of personal choice and therapeutic tenacity,” Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 28 (2020), 29p.
• "In the face of death. Societal attitudes and popular opinion on medical aid and dying in Belgium 1936-1950," Secular Studies 4, no. 1 (Brill: 2022), 71-92.
• Jeffrey Tyssens, Niels De Nutte and Stefan Schröder, eds., The Non-religious and the State: Seculars crafting their lives in different frameworks from the Age of Revolution to the Current Day (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024), 397p. (gold open access)