Sylvie Peperstraete (Uccle, 1977) is an art historian specializing in ancient Mesoamerican religions.
She earned her Ph.D. from the Université libre de Bruxelles in 2005 and was a research fellow (2002-2006), then a postdoctoral researcher (2006-2009), at the Fund for Scientific Research – FNRS.
Sylvie Peperstraete is now a professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where she was head of the Department of Philosophy from 2016 to 2018, and a director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.
She is also a fellow member of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences (RAOS), and a scientific collaborator at the Art & History Museum in Brussels.
She is a member of several associations and institutions, and she was president of the Société des Américanistes de Belgique from 2012 to 2017.
Her research focuses on Central Mexico and especially on Aztec religion, which she studies from an interdisciplinary perspective (ethnohistory, iconology, archaeology, philology). Sylvie Peperstraete is the author or the co-author of more than 100 scientific papers, and she also directed the Problèmes d'Histoire des Religions (Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles) from 2015 to 2020.
Key Publications
Peperstraete, S. (2021). Myths, Rites, and the Agricultural Cycle: The Huixtotin Priests and the Veintenas. In E. Dupey García & E. Mazzetto (Eds.), Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle - New Studies on the Veintenas Festivals (pp. 185-206). New York: Peter Lang.
Peperstraete, S. (2020). Representing the Human Body in Postclassic Central Mexico. A Study of Proportions and their Evolution in the Aztec Pictorial Tradition. In Ch. Beekman & B. Faugère (Eds.), Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands. Gods, Ancestors, and Human Beings (pp. 331-354). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Peperstraete, S., & Kruell, G. K. (2014). Determining the Authorship of the Crónica Mexicayotl: Two Hypotheses. The Americas, 71(2), 315-338.
https://doi.org/10.1353/tam.2014.0139
Peperstraete, S. (2009). Image and Ritual in the Aztec World. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Peperstraete, S. (2006). Los murales de Ocotelulco y el problema de la procedencia del Códice Borgia. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, (37), 15-32.
Complete list of publications