Elena Vanden Abeele is an art historian specialising in nineteenth-century fashion and textiles, with a focus on fashion in Belgium and the role of women in the arts. Her FWO-funded research project (2025–2029) 'Fashion in Belgium (1830–1914): Garments, Organisation, Gender, Class and Nationalism' aims to map fashion and the fashion industry in Belgium, using a corpus of over a hundred extant garments produced in Belgium. Elena received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history from KU Leuven in 2023, during which she completed an internship at the Fashion & Lace Museum in Brussels. From November 2024 to October 2025, she worked as a research assistant for the Belgian Fashion Research Network 'Revers' at Ghent University. She has co-authored an article for the journal 'Volkskunde' on the modernisation of lace education in Flanders in the early twentieth century and published an article on the fashion history and socio-cultural meaning of parasols in the nineteenth century in 'Costume'.