Wim Lemmens

Wim Lemmens holds an MA in History from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, 2008) and an MA Research-Contemporary Societies from the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris-I, 2009). His early research examined nineteenth-century liberal networks in small-town Limburg, and the role of French migrants in the development and circulation of early Belgian liberal thought.

As a research associate at the Liberaal Archief (now: Liberas, Ghent), he initiated doctoral research into the networks of journalists, printers and publishers who contributed to the production and dissemination of liberal ideas in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and in the first decades of independent Belgium. His project approaches the emergence of liberal thought through the circulation of ideas, the formation of (trans)national networks and the role of publicists as actors in the nineteenth-century press and print sphere.

His publications address political-cultural conflicts, transnational networks, and the dissemination of liberal and anti-clerical ideas. His works also engage with broader questions concerning the relationship between liberalism, secularisation and the public sphere in nineteenth-century Belgium.

Alongside his research, he works full-time as a secondary-school teacher of history, citizenship, cultural awareness and art history. As a member of SSAB he is currently completing his doctoral project with the support of an FWO Special PhD Fellowship.