Nele Wynants is research assistant professor of art and theatre studies at the University of Antwerp (ARIA). She has published on the popularization of science, technology and visual media in theatre and popular culture in the period 1800–1914 and on contemporary interactions between art and science. She is Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850–1914 (SciFair), which explores itinerant showpeople and the circulation of knowledge in fairground culture (www.scifair.eu).
Her work on magic history and illusionism investigates how optical devices, stage conjuring, and scientific performances shaped popular understandings of science and technology. She has published on magicians such as Henri Robin, the Courtois and Grandsart-Courtois families, and on itinerant visual media like magic lantern shows.
Wynants is editor of Media Archaeology and Intermedial Performance: Deep Time of the Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan); Performing Science, Mediating Knowledge (Brepols forthcoming) and author of numerous essays that bring together perspectives from performance studies, media archaeology, and history of science and knowledge. She is also active in heritage and curatorial projects, including the exhibition and book Foorwonder on fairground culture, and regularly collaborates with artists, collectors, and museums to reimagine the history of magic and illusionism for contemporary audiences.
Wynants, Nele, ed. Media Archaeology and Intermedial Performance: Deep Time of the Theatre, (Springer International Publishing, 2019), pp. 1–19, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99576-2_1
Vanhoutte, Kurt, and Nele Wynants, ‘On the Passage of a Man of the Theatre through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: Henri Robin, Performing Astronomy in Nineteenth Century Paris’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 15.2 (2017), pp. 152–74, doi:10.1080/17460654.2017.1318520
Wynants, Nele, ‘Invisible Hands in the History of the Magic Lantern: Where Theatre Studies and Media Archaeology Meet’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 18.4 (2020), pp. 422–47, doi:10.1080/17460654.2021.2016213
Wynants, Nele, ‘The Travelling Lantern: The Courtois and Grandsart-Courtois Family Theatres as Transcultural Mediators at the Nineteenth-Century Fair’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 17.3–4 (2019), pp. 233–60, doi:10.1080/17460654.2019.1705649
Wynants, Nele, ‘La science au champ de foire. Diffusion de la technologie, du savoir et du spectacle dans les villes de province belge durant la fin-de-siècle’, 1895 revue d’histoire du cinéma, no. 96 (2022), pp. 68–101