Introducing Leonie: Uncovering Resistance to Women in Belgian Politics
We’re excited to welcome Leonie as she begins her PhD journey exploring the opposition faced by female politicians in twentieth-century Belgium. Her research, supervised by Nel de Mûelenaere (History) and Silvia Erzeel (Political Science), will take a prosopographical approach to uncover how Belgium’s first female MPs navigated political resistance—and the strategies they developed to counter it. Ultimately, the project aims to build a new framework for understanding opposition to female politicians across different historical and geographical contexts.
For her master’s thesis at the VUB, Leonie investigated the often invisible and unpaid labour of women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, drawing on social surveys and autobiographies. In 2024, she contributed to the Mapping Female Politicians in Belgium and Brussels, 1948–1992 project. Passionate about making historical research accessible to a wider audience, Leonie has already made her mark beyond academia. She contributed to the VUB’s Resistance Alley, which highlights the stories of WWII resistance members, and interned at VRT, where she helped produce a historical documentary on fertility treatments in Belgium.