Dr Dominiek Dendooven

About

Born in Bruges, Dominiek Dendooven completed his studies in history (1994) and in archival science (1995) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 2018 he obtained a PhD in History from the University of Kent and the Universiteit Antwerpen. Dominiek Dendooven has been a curator and researcher at the prize-winning In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper since 1998. He was heavily involved in the development of the permanent exhibitions (1998 and 2012). He has also co-ordinated major temporary exhibitions, including Man – Culture – War: Multicultural Aspects of the First World War (2008), Toiling for War: Chinese Labourers in the First World War (2010), War and Trauma: Soldiers and Ambulances (2013–14) and Feniks: Reconstructing Flanders Fields (2020).  He is also a guest lecturer at the University of Leuven–Courtrai, an associate fellow of the Centre for Political History at the Universiteit Antwerpen, and an honorary research fellow of the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research of the United Service Institution of India, Delhi.

Publications

• Menin Gate & Last Post: Ypres as Holy Ground (Klaproos, 2001)
• World War I: Five Continents in Flanders, with Piet Chielens (Lannoo, 2008)
• ‘Living Apart Together: Belgian Witness Accounts of the Colonial Troops in Flanders during the Great War’, in Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• 1917: The Passchendaele Year. The British Army in Flanders. The Diary of Achiel Van Walleghem (EER Publishers, 2017)
• India in Flanders Fields, with Rana Chhina (USI of India, 2017)
• Ypres, War and Reconstruction: A Photographic Account by Maurice and Robert Antony, with Piet Chielens and Jan Dewilde (Tijdsbeeld, 2020)

Research interests

His main research interest is the presence of non-European troops on the Western Front during the First World War and the long-term impact of their European residence, the war experience of the local populations near the front line, as well as the post-war reconstruction and the development of the ‘memory landscape’ of Flanders. As a ‘museum person’, he attaches great importance to material culture such as (trench) art or memorials as an alternative historical source. A book based on his PhD thesis on the war experiences of Indians and Chinese on the Western Front was published in Dutch in 2019. An English edition is forthcoming (Pen & Sword, 2021). He is currently preparing a new book on the British West Indies Regiment.