Simon Smets’ main interests lie in humanist epistolary literature and Neo-Latin epic. He obtained his PhD at University College London with a thesis on authorship and narrative design in Renaissance Latin letter collections. He has a BA degree in Latin and Greek literature from Ghent University, and a MA degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from University College London, where he complemented his literary background with a more historical approach to the Italian Renaissance.

Simon works at the LBI with Dr Federica Rossetti and Professor Florian Schaffenrath in the FWF funded project on Basinio da Parma’s epic poem Hesperis. He is currently finishing the English translation of this poem with introduction and commentary for publication in Brill’s RSA Texts & Studies series. In October 2024, he will start an FWO-funded junior postdoctoral fellowship at KU Leuven on Neo-Ancient Greek and Neo-Latin verse paraphrases of Biblical poetry. His other interests are the modern reception of antiquity and of the Neo-Latin heritage, especially in visual arts, early twentieth-century drama, and modernist poetry.

Simon has taught modules on Latin language, Neo-Latin literature, and the reception of the classical tradition at University College London and the University of Innsbruck. He has written on paratexts and intertextuality in Neo-Latin literature, on the role of Latin in the visual arts, and on grammatical handbooks between Spain and the Low Countries.

He is the LBI’s representative on the organising committee of the Scientific Research Network “Literatures without Borders. A Historical-Comparative Study of Premodern Literary Transnationality” and coordinates the oral history project of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies. Simon is part of the editorial teams of the peer-reviewed journals Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures and Humanistica Lovaniensia while being actively engaged in the group Researchers of European Literary Identities, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools.