Christel Stalpaert is a Senior Full Professor in the field of Performance Studies and has served as the head of the Department of Art History, Musicology, and Theatre Studies at Ghent University (Belgium) since 2021. She was a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) in 2023 and was elected in 2025 as a member of the Class of Arts of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts. Stalpaert publishes widely in the field: on the history of performing arts (1870-present); performance philosophy; the embodied poetics of failure; art, ecology, and well-being; and art at the intersection of science and activism. She contributed to journals such as Performance Research and The Drama Review. Her recent publications include Performance and Posthumanism (with van Baarle and Karreman, Palgrave 2021) and Violence and Trauma in Contemporary Performance (with Sofie de Smet, Marieke Breyne, and Pedzisai Maedza, LUPress, 2025). Together with Eylül Fidan Akıncı, she co-edited the thematic issue 'On Activation' for Performance Research (2023). Her handbook Theater: A History of the Performing Arts in Western Europe from 1870 to 1950 was published (in Dutch) in 2022 by Owl Press/Borgerhoff and Lamberigts. Not infrequently, Christel Stalpaert's research informs socially embedded projects developed in close collaboration with artists, art institutions, and governmental bodies. Her two most recent FWO research projects, Necropolis United (2023-2026) and Confluvial (2025-2028), address social issues such as migration and (hydro)ecology in relation to art and are being developed in close collaboration with artists Arkadi Zaides and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia. In 2007, Stalpaert founded the AUGent-authorized research group Postdramatic Aesthetics: Word, Sound, Image. In 2011, this research group was embedded in the UGent-authorized research centre S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts & Media), of which she is the co-director. Additionally, she is a co-founding member of the FWO-funded research network CoDa (Cultures of Dance), and the UGent consortia Human Rights Research Network (HRRN, led by Ellen Desmet and Tine Destrooper), The City Academy: A Collaboratorium for Ghent Sustainability Issues (led by Thomas Block), and CHARM (Consortium for Health Humanities, Arts, Reading and Medicine, led by Jürgen Pieters and Zoë Ghyselinck). Christel Stalpaert is co-editor-in-chief of the A1.2.-rated journal Documenta: Journal for Theater.