“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
– Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau
David Lombard
Junior Postdoctoral Researcher
I’m a junior postdoctoral researcher at the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) affiliated with the University of Leuven, where I work at the English Literature and the Cultural Studies Research Groups and am a member of the steering committee of the Leuven Center for Health Humanities. I did my Ph.D. in literary studies as a joint degree between the universities of Liège and Leuven in Belgium (2020–24), with a dissertation titled “American Anthropocene Sublimes: Rhetorics and Narrations of Self and Environment in the Contemporary U.S. Ecobiographical Memoir.”
During my Ph.D. situated at the intersection of American literary studies, narratology, and the environmental humanities, I was also a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin (fall 2022) and the Ohio State University, at Project Narrative (spring 2023).
Since 2018, I’ve been mainly working and publishing in the fields and areas of contemporary (American) literature and culture, life writing and memoir studies, environmental humanities, health humanities, aesthetic theory and theories of the sublime, Henry David Thoreau and American transcendentalism, rhetoric and rhetorical narratology, and comparative literature.
I’m the author of the book Techno-Thoreau: Aesthetics, Ecology and the Capitalocene (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2019), which served as an extended pilot study for my PhD project funded by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS). In addition, my essays and book reviews have been published in edited volumes as well as in academic journals such as Épistémocritique, Miranda, the Journal of Arts and Media Studies, the Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, Local Environment, The Trumpeter, and Acta fabula.
My editing work includes a co-edited (with Stefano Rozzoni) special issue on “The Pastoral: New Trajectories in the Anthropocene” (Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities, December 2021). In addition, I’m currently co-editing (with Alison Sperling and Pieter Vermeulen) a special focus section of Ecozon@ on “The Anthropocene Sublimes,” which will be published in the spring of 2025, and I’m an associate editor for the U.S. studies academic association and research blog PopMeC.
Besides, I have teaching experience, having taught English and Spanish for a few months at Belgian high schools, ESP (English for Specific Purposes) classes for three years at various faculties of the University of Liège (at the department of Institut Supérieur des Langues Vivantes), and literature and literary criticism classes at the universities of Liège and Leuven. I am also occasionally invited to teach classes and give lectures whose topics are closely related to my research projects or to the broader field of literary and cultural studies.
Lastly, I am a singer-songwriter and musician. For my music output, please visit this website.
Education:
Ph.D., Literature and Literary Studies, University of Liège and University of Leuven (joint degree), Belgium, 2024.
Advanced M.A., Modern Languages and Literatures: English and Spanish (upper secondary education teacher training degree), University of Liège, Belgium, 2017 (cum laude).
M.A., Modern Languages and Literatures: English and Spanish (research focus with an emphasis on American Literature and Culture, and Ecocriticism), University of Liège, Belgium, 2016 (magna cum laude, grade for master’s thesis: 95%).
B.A., Modern Languages and Literatures: English and Spanish, University of Liège, 2014 (cum laude).
Employment:
Junior postdoctoral researcher at the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), 2024–present.
Research fellow (ASP – Aspirant) at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [FNRS]), Belgium, 2020–2024.
Lecturer/English instructor (Chargé d’enseignement en fonction principale en anglais and Maître de conférence) at the University of Liège (Department of ISLV – Institut Supérieur des Langues Vivantes), 2017–2020.
English and Spanish teacher in the Fédération Wallonie–Bruxelles, Belgium, 2017–2018.
Teaching assistant at the University of Liège (Department of Langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction), Belgium, 2016–2017.
Honors, Grants, Fellowships, and Awards
2024 | Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) junior postodoctoral fellowship |
2024 | Credit for scientific meeting abroad of the FNRS |
2022–24 | Research Fellow Fellowship renewal awarded by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) |
2023 | Herman Van Beneden Foundation Award |
2023 | Credit for brief stay abroad from the FNRS |
2023 | Subsidy for stay abroad or in Flanders from the University of Liège |
2022 | The 2022 Literary Encyclopedia Travel Award (First place) |
2022 | The District 2160 of Rotary International Grant |
2022 | Camille Hela Foundation Award |
2022 |
Subsidy for stay abroad or in Flanders from the University of Liège |
2020–22 | Research Fellow Fellowship (ASP – Aspirant) awarded by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) |
2020 |
My book Techno–Thoreau was shortlisted for the ESSE Book Award (Category B – Junior Scholars) |
2018 |
Léon Guérin Award (Les Amis de l’Université de Liège) for best master’s dissertation in Anglophone literatures |
2018 | Two-year ASLE International Membership Grant |
2013 | Erasmus Scholarship |
“All cultures and peoples turn to poetry during times of celebration, transformation and challenge—those times when ordinary language cannot carry meaning beyond our understanding.”
― Joy Harjo