Koen De Temmerman (born in 1979) is a full professor at the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University, where he directs the Novel Saints: Ancient Fiction and Hagiography Research Center.
He studied Classical Literature (BA 1999, MA 2001) and Communication Sciences (MA 2002) at Ghent University and the University of Bologna. For his doctoral thesis (Ghent 2006, supervisor K. Demoen), he received the Triennial Prize for Humanities from the Flemish Academic Foundation (2008). After his doctorate, he was a Francqui Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation at Stanford University, a visiting lecturer at University College Cork, a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Flemish Research Council (F.W.O.-Vlaanderen), and a Stanley Seeger Fellow at Princeton University. In 2017, he was awarded the Laureate of Humanities Prize by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Arts and Sciences. He is also the recipient of two ERC grants (Starting Grant 2013, Consolidator Grant 2018).
He was a member of the Belgian Young Academy (2013-18) and a member of the Executive Board of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (2017-22). He is editor-in-chief of Ancient Narrative and Fabulae. Narrative in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, member of the editorial board of L'Antiquité Classique and Kleio. Tijdschrift voor oude talen en antieke culturen, as well as coordinator of Ancient Rhetoric and Aesthetics (a research group of OIKOS, the Dutch research school for classical disciplines).
De Temmerman focuses on the history of the origins of the novel. He studies the earliest examples of this genre (Greek and Latin; early centuries of the Common Era) and their persistence in later periods. Paying particular attention to late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, he aims to correct the traditional historical-literary view that conceptualizes both eras as ‘empty’ periods of transition between the last ancient novels and their reception in the Byzantine Empire and Persia in the 11th and 12th centuries. Thematically, De Temmerman is interested in the representation of characters; methodologically, his work combines insights from ancient rhetoric, physiognomy, and modern literary theory (mainly narratology).
In Ghent, De Temmerman teaches ancient rhetoric and literary history. He leads a team of about ten researchers with the generous support of the Flemish Research Council (F.W.O.-Vlaanderen), the Research Council of Ghent University (B.O.F.), and the European Research Council (ERC). In his popular science contributions, he advocates the importance of the classical disciplines (and the humanities in general) in education and their relevance today.