Heike Bekaert

Heike Bekaert (2003°) is a doctoral researcher pursuing a joint PhD at Ghent University (home institution) and VUB on the research project Predictive astronomy, Copernicanism and Catholicism in the 17th-century Habsburg Netherlands. The case of Govaert Wendelen (1580-1667). The project is supervised by Prof. dr. Steven Vanden Broecke and Prof. dr. Marlise Rijks, and is part of the larger project Copernican, catholic, Stoic , which includes fellow PhD student Sophie Herz. Within the framework of this project, Heike researches 17th-century astronomical culture and its interconnection with Catholic thought through the case study of the astronomer-priest Govaert Wendelen (1580-1667) and his network.

In 2025, Bekaert obtained his master’s degree in history (UGent) with a thesis on the astrological practices of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), for which he was awarded the André Schaepdrijver Award for best thesis by the Alumni Association of the Department of History. He has continued his studies with a programme in historical linguistics and literature (UGent) with a focus on Latin. Bekaert worked as an assistant researcher at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, where he developed workflows for Named Entity Recognition and Relation Extraction within historical research. Since 2026, he has been an active student board member of Gewina, the Belgian-Dutch society for the History of Science and University. Additionally, he is the managing editorial assistant for Lias, Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and its Sources.