Zoë Vanderhaeghen is a research assistant for the BOF (Ghent University) and CRASSH (University of Cambridge) project Camouflage, Zoomorphism, and the Origins of Image-Making, supervised by Prof. Bram Van Oostveldt and Prof. Caroline Van Eck. Her work focuses on the cultural history of deception, with particular attention to dissimulation, masking, and animal symbolism in early modern art and performance.

In September 2024, she co-presented with Prof. Van Oostveldt The Chameleon as a Symbol of Dissimulation in Seventeenth-Century Discourse at the international workshop Masks: New Perspectives on a Global Phenomenon, co-organized by Scuola Normale Superiore, Leiden University, King’s College Cambridge, and the Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia in Pisa and Florence.

In May 2025, she co-organized the interdisciplinary workshop Disguise and Deception: New Perspectives on Human and Non-Human Animal Camouflage and Mimicry hosted by King's College Cambridge and the Department of Art History, presenting (Un)Masking and dissimulation in Catherine de Medici’s Ballet des Polonais (1573).

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