Reinout Vander Hulst obtained his master’s degree in History (with minor in Political Science) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2016. Shortly after graduation, he was asked to study and organize the archives of the Mutuelle de l’Union Belge, a Belgian mutuality founded in 1888 to support the Belgian workers’ community in the Parisian region. In November 2017, he started a PhD as part of the research project ‘Catholic Medicine and its Others in Belgium and the Belgian Congo, 1900-1965’ of the KU Leuven. His doctoral dissertation deals with the interactions between Catholicism, medicine and colonialism. By focusing on the relationship between the Catholic University of Leuven and its colonial spin-off in Congo, Lovanium, he uncovered the burgeoning professional identities of Congolese medical auxiliaries, students and doctors. During his PhD-research, he published several scientific articles and co-authored a chapter about colonial healthcare in the book Koloniaal Congo: een geschiedenis in vragen/ Le Congo colonial: une histoire en questions.
In July 2023, Reinout started as a postdoctoral researcher on DIGICOLJUST-2. In his capacity as an archivist at the State Archives of Belgium (ARA2- depot Joseph Cuvelier), he will focus on disclosing and digitising the military court records of de Conseil de Guerre and coordinate the sharing of (digital) archival heritage between Belgium and Congo. Finally, he will also investigate the organisation and functioning of the Conseil de Guerre en Campagne during both World Wars to shed light on the globalisation of Congolese intermediaries, the fluidity between peacetime and war and conceptions of ‘legitimate state violence’.