Kurt Vanhoutte is a Full Professor and a leading expert in theatre and performance studies. He studied literature, performance, and media studies at the universities of Brussels, Antwerp, and Berlin, before pursuing a PhD and postdoctoral research at the University of Antwerp. From 2003 to 2006, he was appointed Professor of Arts, Culture, and Media at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and also served as a guest professor in the Department of Art History at Ghent University. Since 2006, he has coordinated the Master’s programme in Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Antwerp, where he is a founding member of the Research Centre for Visual Poetics. His research focuses on the performance of science, knowledge, and the occult in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, taking a media-archaeological approach to uncover forgotten or obsolete technologies and the visions they inspired—visions that continue to shape public perception and cultural narratives today. Vanhoutte was granted major projects with specific relevance to the interplay of theatre, science and illusionism, including a European 7th Framework programme on digital immersive technologies, several research projects on performing science granted by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and a JPI Cultural Heritage project. Between 2018 and 2025, Vanhoutte was the spokesperson-coordinator of a large-scale, interdisciplinary Excellence of Science (EOS-FWO/FNRS) project investigating the role of the magic lantern in science, politics and entertainment. Vanhoutte has been active in the field of art and science as a curator and dramaturg.
Bigg, Charlotte, Elsa De Smet, and Kurt Vanhoutte, Voir sans limites: sciences, techniques et esthétiques des origines (Sesto San Giovanni: Éditions Mimesis, 2025).
Vanhoutte, Kurt, and Nele Wynants, ‘L’Agioscope d’Henri Robin et Pierre Séguin : nouvelles vues sur l’histoire de la lanterne magique’, in Les spectacles de curiosités en Europe : De la Révolution française à la fin du XIXe siècle, ed. by Philippe Bourdin and Cyril Triolaire (Clermont-Ferrand : Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal , 2024), pp. 230–56.
Jonckheere, Evelien, and Kurt Vanhoutte, ‘Métempsycose as Attraction on the Fairground: The Migration of a Ghost’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 17.3–4 (2019), 261-278.
Vanhoutte, Kurt, and Nele Wynants, ‘Magie, Science et Apparences: Le Théâtre d'Henri Robin’, in Machines, Magie, Médias, ed. by Frank Kessler et al. (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2018), pp. 103–116.
Bigg, Charlotte, and Kurt Vanhoutte, eds, Spectacular Astronomy, special issue of Early Popular Visual Culture, 15.2 (2017), 164 pp.