In September 2023, FEDtWIN researcher Margot Luyckfasseel joined SHOC. She works part-time as assistant professor of History at VUB, and part-time as work leader at Belgium's State Archives, where she is in charge of the colonial archives about Ruanda-Urundi.
Margot obtained a PhD in African languages and cultures at UGhent (2021) with a thesis on Kinshasa. She worked at the same university as a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC project The Aftermath of Slavery in East Africa (2022-2023). In autumn 2022, she was a visiting professor at the Université de Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was also a member of the expert group appointed by the Brussels Region to research traces of the colonial past in public spaces (2020-2022). Her research has been published in leading African studies journals, such as Africa, Journal of African Cultural Studies and International Journal of African Historical Studies. The journal African Studies awarded her work with the Vilakazi award (2019) and she is a laureate of the Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences (2023).
More generally, Margot is interested in (post)colonial power constellations, language ideologies and group identities. Her preferred methodological approach is to combine archival and oral sources.