Louise Van Gysel

Education: Master in Educational Sciences - Special Needs Education & Disability Studies (Ghent University)

Research themes: peer programs in prisons, participation and voice of incarcerated persons, reintegration, emotional needs, forensic mental health care, addiction and recovery. 

Louise Van Gysel started in December 2025 as a PhD researcher at the Department of Special Needs Education at Ghent University and is also affiliated with the research group Participation & Learning in Detention (PALD) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focuses on the functioning of peer programs providing emotional support in detention: what they achieve, the mechanisms underlying their impact and how contextual factors shape their effectiveness, with particular attention to their potential to transform the prison experience and thus promote reintegration and desistance from crime. This PhD research is part of a joint PhD between Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University and is funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) within the FWO-SBO project Peer Support Innovating Prisons: Towards Reintegration and Desistance from Crime. 

From September 2023 to December 2025, Louise Van Gysel worked as a scientific researcher at ScienceForCare (PC Sint-Jan-Baptist), where she conducted research on “(Family) Peer Support Work in Forensic Mental Health”, funded by the Federal Public Service Health.