Michael-W. Serruys studied Modern history at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and Political sciences and international relations at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the Institut d’études politiques in Paris (France) and Venice International University (Italy).  He worked as an archivist at the Arenberg Foundation in Enghien (Belgium) and as a researcher at Leiden University (the Netherlands). In 2018, he was granted an European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship at the CRBC (Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique) at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest (France). He is currently working as a VUB Return Fellowship at research team HOST (Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).  He is a Fellow (2014) of the Royal Belgian Marine Society, and since 2021, Member of the Society’s Council.

Serruys’ main research topics are the Austrian Netherlands’ transport policy, Belgian maritime geopolitical questions, the Ostend Company and the social impact of marine environmental crises (the shipworm epidemic) on maritime societies in Western Europe in the eighteenth century. He has written several articles and book chapters on these issues. In 2019, he was co-editor with Giovanni Favero (Ca’Foscari University Venice) and Miki Sugiura (Hosei University Tokyo) of The Urban logistic network. Cities, Transport and Distribution in Europe from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. He is also one of the co-authors of La Marine belge. De 1946 à nos jours / De Belgische Marine. Sedert 1946. Een geschiedenis (2020).