Ilona Dauw is a PhD student in history. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in history with a specialisation in historical communication from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. She wrote her master's thesis on the experience of Polish civilians under occupation during the First World War, entitled ‘Emotions and occupations in the East. Everyday life in Polish diaries during the First World War'.’ Since July 2022, she has been carrying out a doctoral thesis funded by the FNRS at the Catholic University of Louvain and co-promoted with the University of Leipzig. Her dissertation topic is: ‘Managing an epidemic during and after a war: The ‘Spanish’ flu in Belgium and the General Government of Warsaw (1918-1920)’. She has been an affiliated researcher at GWZO (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe) since mid-2023. 

Her main research areas are the history of the occupations of the First World War (Eastern and Western Fronts), history of emotions, sensory history and the history of epidemics.