Lieke studied Archaeological Science at Leiden University (Netherlands), with a specialisation in osteoarchaeology and isotope analysis of human remains. For her MSc thesis, she investigated diet at the late to post-Medieval village of Koudekerke in Zeeland (NL) through stable isotope analysis. After graduating, she stayed at Leiden University for a year (2025) to work as a research assistant to Dr. Letty ten Harkel for a project investigating the Early Medieval emporium of Dorestad (NL). This research involved strontium, oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen and carbon isotope analyses of 20 individuals from Dorestad to gain insight into mobility and diet of the population.
Lieke does a joint PhD in History & Archaeology at the VUB and UGent as part of the iBOF project LOCO (The LOw COuntries: Crossroads of Europe from the Neolithic to the Late Middle Ages). This interdisciplinary and interuniversity project examines the movement of people, materials and ideas in and out of the Low Countries over a period of 7.000 years.
She is supervised by Bart Lambert (VUB, Medieval History), Isabelle De Groote (UGent, Physical Anthropology), and Christophe Snoeck (VUB, Archaeology & Isotope Geochemistry). Her research aims to better understand the mobility of people in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages (500-1500) through a combination of non-metric dental trait and isotope analyses, as well as the use of historical data on late medieval urban migration from so-called poorterboeken (citizenship registers).