About Wout Saelens

Wout Saelens is a postdoc at the Centre for Urban History of the University of Antwerp and the Social History of Capitalism research group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His research is situated at the intersection of energy, pollution and everyday life in the early modern and modern history of the Low Countries. In 2021, Saelens obtained his PhD at the University of Antwerp and VUB with a dissertation on the fossil-fuel transition, viewed from a consumer perspective. His current project studies the political ecology, environmental law and popular awareness of coal smoke in the 19th-century city.