Jens van de Maele has studied History at the universities of Leuven and Vancouver. He obtained his PhD from the universities of Ghent and Antwerp, with a dissertation on the political and architectural histories of ministry office buildings in Belgium during the interwar period. Jens has published on architectural history and urban environmental history.
Currently, he coordinates the BUREU research project, which has been financed through the CORE programme of the FNR. BUREU aims to investigate how the interiors of EU office buildings (1950s-2000) affected the process of European integration on the level of everyday material and bureaucratic practices. A transnational project, BUREU draws on the expertise of both C²DH and the research group MoSa at the University of Leuven.
From late 2019 until mid-2022, Jens was involved in the Remixing industrial pasts in the digital age project. As a member of the curatorial team of the virtual exhibition Minett Stories, he (co-)wrote chapters on air pollution and photographic culture in Luxembourg's Minett region. Prior to this (2017-2018), Jens was the co-curator of the exhibition "Brussels, November 1918: From War to Peace?" (BELvue Museum, Brussels).