Nel de Mûelenaere is Associate Professor of Contemporary History, holder of the chair Traces of Resistance, and head of the VUB history program. Her research focuses on the lived experience of the two World Wars in Belgium. She has published in journals including European Review of History, Nature Sustainability, and Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis on the history of food crises, international development, and militarization. Dr. De Mûelenaere held visiting fellowships at UC Berkeley (2022) and Cornell University (2019) and served as academic co-director of the Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies (2020–2022).
In 2024, she co-founded the 'Traces of the Resistance' chair (2024-2028) in collaboration with the non-profit organization Heroes of the Resistance. This chair aims to promote and share academic and citizen science on the Belgian resistance during the Second World War, as well as make this knowledge accessible to the public. The first collaborative project, 'Last Words', investigates the farewell letters of resistance members who were executed during the war. https://www.laatstewoorden.be/
She obtained a PhD in political history (2016) from Antwerp University. Her disssertation explored forgotten militarization processes in Belgian society between 1890 and 1914, and was published by Leuven University Press in 2019.