Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans

Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans is assistant professor in photography and contemporary art at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

She studied art history at Jagiellonian University in Cracow and subsequently obtained a master's degree in philosophy from UPJP2 Cracow and a master’s degree in cultural studies from KU Leuven. She completed her PhD in art history at KU Leuven in 2011. She teaches courses on photography, film and new media, as well as participation in contemporary art. In September 2023 she joined the team of the vice-chairs of the Art History and Archeology Program at VUB where she is responsible for education and student affairs. She is member of the Brussels Arts Platform and of the Art Advisory Committee of VUB. She is also fellow of the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Art and Visual Culture at KU Leuven and member of the editorial board of Leuven University Press. Apart from that, she is board member of the artist collective Messidor based in Brussels. 

In 2022 she initiated the EUTOPIA Connected Research Community Incubator Photography and Dissent in collaboration with Hannah Van Hove (VUB), Camille Rouquet (Cy Cergy) and Susana Martins (NOVA), which evolved into an EUTOPIA research partnership on lens-based media established between VUB, University of Gothenburg, University of Ljubljana and NOVA University in Lisbon.  Her research interests include vernacular and documentary photography and film, image performativity and protest movements, networks and new materialisms, intersections of art and technology, knowledge and activism, critical theory, decoloniality, cultures and identities of Eastern Europe.

Katarzyna is author of the book 'Images Performing History: Photography and Representations of the Past in European Art after 1989' (LUP, 2015) as well as of several articles and book chapters.

Current doctoral supervision

Gustavo Amaral: The Singularities of the Cinematographic Portrait: The Film-Portrait in Portuguese Cinema, 1964 - 2019 (EUTOPIA Joint PhD with NOVA)

Brenda Bikoko: Female artists appropriating the colonial archive from the 1990’s till today

Jiao Feng: Small Histories, Big Histories. Artistic Potentiality to Resist the Official Storytelling

Ophélie Laloy: Les aquarelles congolaises des années 1920 (Brain-be 2.0 project Congolines)

Senne Schraeyen: Sustainable yet forgotten. Rediscovering the contribution of the Belgian art networks to the second wave of environmentalism (FWO Doctoral Fellowship, with Inge Arteel (VUB) as co-promotor)

Esther Severi: Kunst als oefenruimte voor potentiële geschiedenis en een toekomstige werkelijkheidKunst als oefenruimte voor potentiële geschiedenis en een toekomstige werkelijkheid (PhD in the Arts, RITCS/VUB)

Helke Smet: European female artists in the Société Anonyme Collection

Katrien Verbeke: The role of photography in visualizing and conceptualizing the landscape in the so-called 'Anthropocene'

Felipe Xavier Martins De Lima: Precarious Forms: A Study on the Aesthetics of Instability and Insecurity in
Contemporary Art, 1989-2019 (EUTOPIA Joint PhD with NOVA, Sonja Lavaert, VUB, as co-promotor)

Yuxin Yan: Ethnic Minorities in Fiction Musical Films of Mainland-China (CSC, with Sabine Hillen, VUB, as the main promotor)

Completed doctoral supervision

Sanne Fleur Sinnige: Re-Presenting the Past: The Time-Based Return of Belgian Colonial History in Contemporary Art and Film, 1986-2016 (FWO Doctoral Fellowship)