Marie-José Govers is an independent scholar whose research focuses on the historical and literary portrayal of women from the thirteenth century until modern times, from the mystic Hadewijch to Ingeborg Bachmann. She received master’s degrees in Historical Netherlandish Literature and Language, Comparative Literature and Theoretical Literature, and Women’s Studies (now Gender Studies) from the Catholic University of Nijmegen, now Radboud University, and hopes to defend her dissertation on Houwaert and his Pegasides Pleyn, ende den Lust-Hof der Maeghden (Plain of the Muses, or, The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women) at the University of Antwerp in 2026.