About me
I am a historian of early modern Europe specializing in visual culture, religion, and women’s history. I earned my PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University with a dissertation support from the Fulbright Foundation and Belgian American Educational Foundation. I then spent four years at the University of Bern, where I taught art history courses and worked as a postdoc on Prof. Dr. Christine Göttler’s Marie Curie ERC project on Emmanuel Ximenez. I received fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. I joined the University of Utrecht faculty in 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, before leaving in 2022 to shift my energy from teaching towards professional editing.
Throughout my career, I have worked extensively with non-native English–speaking colleagues, providing translation, editing, and peer-review support. Early highlights include drafting and editing a successful collaborative Swiss National Science Foundation grant application (“The Interior: Art, Space, and Performance,” 1.2 million CHF) and co-editing the open-access 2019 volume Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries (Brill). Since starting my business, my clients’ work has appeared in venues including Renaissance Quarterly, Oxford University Press, and Routledge. I am deeply committed to helping scholars transform their original research into clear, compelling text, whether the aim is to secure funding for new research or to create impactful publications.
My own publications
As a scholar, I’ve been through the publishing process myself many times. Through these experiences I’ve learned what presses expect and how to avoid common pitfalls. I’ve also made some great contacts. Here’s a list of my work:
MONOGRAPH
Visual Culture at the Court Beguinages: Unconventual Women in the Hapsburg Low Countries 1585-1794. New York: Routledge, 2026. https://www.routledge.com/Unconventual-Women-in-the-Habsburg-Low-Countries-1585-1794-Visual-Culture-at-the-Court-Beguinages/Moran/p/book/9789462986343
EDITED VOLUME
Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750. Co-edited with Amanda Pipkin. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, vol. 217. Leiden: Brill, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004391352. Open access: https://brill.com/view/title/11207
JOURNAL ARTICLES (peer reviewed)
“Low Countries Women as Funders of Art and Architecture: Gender, Property Rights, and the Financing of the Flemish Baroque,” Journal of the Early Modern Low Countries 9.1 (2025), 240-263. https://doi.org/10.51750/emlc23024
“Introduction: Perspectives on Women’s Religious Activities in Early Modern Europe and the Americas,” Co-authored with Liise Lehtsalu & Silvia Evangelisti. Journal of Early Modern History 22 (2018), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-17-00009
“Women at Work: Governance and Financial Administration at the Court Beguinages of the Southern Low Countries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Early Modern History, 22 (2018), 67-95. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-17-00010
“Bringing the Counter-Reformation Home: The Domestic Use of Artworks at the Antwerp Beguinage in the Seventeenth Century,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 38.3 (2015-16), 144-158. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26382527
“‘The Right Hand of Pictura’s Perfection’: Cornelis de Bie’s Het Gulden Cabinet and Antwerp Painting around 1660,” Netherlands Yearbook for Art History (NKJ) 64 (2014), 370-399. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43884406
“Of Locked Doors and Open Windows: Architectural Strategies at the Court Beguinages in the Seventeenth Century,” Chicago Art Journal 20 (2010): 2-27.
SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE (as editor)
Journal of Early Modern History Volume 22, Issue 1-2 (March 2018): Perspectives On Women’s Religious Activities, coordinated and edited with Silvia Evangelisti and Liise Lehtsalu. https://brill.com/view/journals/jemh/22/1-2/jemh.22.issue-1-2.xml
BOOK CHAPTERS
“The Beguinage of Antwerp and the Ruusbroec Collection: Avenues for Research,” in 100 jaar Ruusbroecgenootschap: deel 2: Vrouwen, ed. John Arblaster. Antwerp: University of Antwerp Press (in press).
“Reform and Resistance in the 1540s, or How the Diest Beguines Tried to Get Rid of Their Priest,” in Women and Religion: Dissenters, Workers, Writers in the Early Modern European Context (1500-1700), eds. Francesco Quatrini and Katherine O’Donnell. London: Bloomsbury, 2026, 39-66.
“Court Beguinage Mistresses as Art Curators,” in Women Who Made a Difference in the Arts in the Early Modern Low Countries. Essays in Honour of Katlijne Van der Stighelen, eds. Lieke Van Deinsen, Bert Schepers, Marjan Sterckx, Hans Vlieghe, Bert Watteeuw. Turnhout: Brepols, 2024, 314-323. https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503613055-1
“Women and Artistic Knowledge in the Family: Mechelen Beguinage Grand Mistress Clara Eugenia Brueghel,” in Brueghel: The Family Reunion, ed. Nadia Groeneveld-Baadj. ’s-Hertogenbosch: WBooks, 2023, 107-113. https://wbooks.com/winkel/deutsch-english/brueghel-family-reunion/
“Introduction,” co-authored with Amanda Pipkin, in Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750, eds. Sarah Joan Moran and Amanda Pipkin, eds. Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, vol. 217. Leiden: Brill, 2019, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004391352_002. Open access: https://brill.com/view/title/11207
“Resurrecting the ‘Spiritual Daughters’: The Houtappel Chapel and Women’s Patronage of Jesuit Building Programs in the Spanish Netherlands,” in Sarah Joan Moran and Amanda Pipkin, eds. Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, vol. 217. Leiden: Brill, 2019, 266-322. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004391352_010. Open access: https://brill.com/view/title/11207
“A cui ne fece dono: Art, Exchange, and Affective Prayer in Anthony van Dyck’s Lamentation for the Antwerp Beguines,” in Sensing the Divine: Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, eds. Christine Göttler and Wietse de Boer. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 219-256. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004236653_010
“Guarino Guarini’s Architecture in Print,” in The Theater That Was Rome: Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Views and Maps, ed. Evelyn Lincoln. Providence: RISD Press, 2005.