ERC starting grant for Nele Wynants
B-magic member Nele Wynants has been granted an ERC Starting Grant (2020) for her project "Science at the Fair" (SCIFAIR). The project aims to conduct pioneering research on the role itinerant showpeople played in the transmission and popularization of science and technology at Western European fairgrounds between 1850 and 1914.
New team members
Become acquainted with the new team members that started
in 2022:
Anse De Weerdt is joining the B-Magic ULB team and will be working on a PhD about the magic lantern and its colonial representations, a subject formerly studied by Marte Van Hassel.
in 2021:
Céline Ruivo will investigate how the methods to colour slides and the apparatus have mutated in order to transcribe both a reality and a series of subjective impressions. With the advent of photography, a more truthful approach to the world was adopted in the topics of the magic lantern medium. In the other arts, such as painting, the French “naturalism” movement quested for a more realistic representation of the contemporary world as well, which resulted in restrained colour tones on the slides.
in 2020:
Leen Engelen started as a part-time postdoc researcher (50%) in the Visual Poetics team at Antwerp University in September 2020. She will focus on the use of the latern in opera, ballet and dance performances in Belgium. Among other things, she will look at the "décors lumineux" of the Belgian-born painter and scenographer Eugène Frey.
Kristof Loockx specializes in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social history, with a particular focus on maritime, labour and migration aspects. The aim of his research is to investigate relevant actors and their motives to make use of the magic lantern in Antwerp and Brussels between 1860 and 1920.
Elisa Seghers and Julie De Smedt will assist with coordination and communication activities, including outreach activities to the general public.