Liselotte Sels finished her musicology studies at Ghent University in 2003 with the thesis ‘The mechanical and mental in the first hundred years of piano methodology (1783 - ca.1885)'. In 2004 she accomplished a teacher training, and in 2006 she graduated magna cum laude as Master in music with a lecture-performance in De Rode Pomp, centre for chamber music, in Ghent on the Dutch composer Peter Schat and his Tone Clock.

From 2006 to 2008, Sels was a lecturer musical and art education in the secondary school teacher training cycle at the Ghent Arteveldehogeschool. In 2008, she started her doctoral research project 'Turkish folk music in a transnational context'. From 2008 until 2014 she was a full-time research assistant at the Ghent Conservatory (Hogeschool Gent), where she combined her doctoral thesis with a teaching assignement. For eight years, she led the Cum Splendore choir in Sint-Amandsberg.

After obtaining her doctorate in October 2014, Sels spent a year at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she started the postdoctoral research project 'Radif in the contemporary Iranian music landscape'. At the moment, Sels is a pianist - solo and chamber music -, researcher and writer; she also gives workshops and trainings.