Leonie Vanlerberghe

Leonie will start a PhD on the opposition against female politicians in twentieth century Belgium. Under the supervision of Nel de Mûelenaere (history) and Silvia Erzeel (political science), she will conduct a prosopographical study on the first female members of parliament in Belgium, how their political presence was opposed and the counter-strategies of the female MP’s. The project will result in a new framework to analyse opposition against female politicians in different historical and geographical contexts.

For her master’s thesis at the VUB, Leonie examined the hidden, mostly unpaid, labour by women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century through social surveys and autobiographies. In 2024, she was a researcher for the project Mapping female politicians in Belgium and Brussels, 1948-1992.

Leonie has a particular interest in making historical research accessible to a broad audience. During her studies, she contributed to the VUB’s Resistance Alley, which increases the visibility of Second World War resistance members. As an intern at the VRT, she contributed to a historical documentary on fertility treatments in Belgium.