Birgit Van Puymbroeck

Birgit Van Puymbroeck is Assistant Professor in Literature in English and Research Methodology at VUB (tenure-track).

She studied English and French Linguistics and Literature at Ghent University and Trinity College Dublin, and received her PhD in Literary Studies from Ghent University in 2012 for her dissertation on Anglo-French literary networks in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University, funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation (2013-2014), and at Ghent University, funded by the special research fund (2013-2015) and the Research Foundation – Flanders (2015-2018; 2018-2021). In 2017, she was a visiting fellow at Queen Mary University of London and in 2020 at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. She was selected as a member of the Belgian Young Academy (2018-2023) and the Young Leaders Academy of the European University EUTOPIA alliance (2021-2023).

Van Puymbroeck works on various aspects of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglophone and Francophone literature and culture. Her expertise includes modernism, network theory, transnational relations, periodical studies, print culture, radio studies and sound studies. Her first monograph Modernist Literature and European Identity was published by Routledge in 2020. In addition, her work has appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as PMLA, Modernism/modernity, Modernist Cultures, Modern Language Review, Victorian Periodicals Review and the Journal of European Periodical Studies. She is co-editor of Afterlives of the Brontës, a special issue of Brontë Studies (with Marysa Demoor and Olivia Malfait) and former editor-in-chief of DiGeSt: Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies. At present, she is co-editing the Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals (with Marysa Demoor and Cedric Van Dijck) and working on a second monograph, provisionally titled “Bardic Traditions on Air: Modernism, Radio and Celtic Revivalism.” With Inge Arteel, she co-directs the FWO-funded project “Broadcast Biographies: Innovations in Genre and Medium (1945-2020).”

Birgit Van Puymbroeck is affiliated with the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC) at VUB. She is the co-founder of the 20cc research group at Ghent University and a member of the interdisciplinary 'Writing 1900' network. She has experience (co-)supervising students and is open to receiving requests for PhD and MA supervision in her field of expertise.