Pieter Martens

Pieter Martens is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is the founding director of research group VISU and currently also the chair of the study programme Art Sciences and Archaeology. His interdisciplinary research interests lie at the crossroads of the arts and sciences and focus especially on early modern architecture, urbanism, engineering, siege warfare and urban iconography.

He graduated in architectural engineering at the University of Leuven and studied also in Rome at the Università La Sapienza. He obtained a PhD in Engineering Sciences: Architecture at the University of Leuven (2009) with a dissertation on military architecture in the sixteenth-century Low Countries, which received awards for its use of archival sources and for its contribution to military history.

He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the universities of Leuven (FWO, 2010-2013) and Louvain-la-Neuve (FNRS, 2013-2016) and was also the coordinator of the European Science Foundation Research Networking Programme ‘PALATIUM’ on court residences (ESF, 2010-2015).

A laureate (Class of the Arts) of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB, 2015), he is also an alumnus of the Young Academy of Flanders (Jonge Academie, 2014-2019) and a member of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium.