University of Groningen

Faculty Member, Department of Religious Studies

About

I am a faculty member of the department of Religious Studies in Groningen. Aside from teaching, I will be completing my book on religious change in the Netherlands for publication. Furthermore, I will continue to do research and write on the subject of Catholicism, spirituality and transnational religion in the public sphere.

2007-2010 I was working on a project tracing Nigerian pentecostal churches and believers in Europe and how they contribute to the re-emergence of religion in the public sphere (www.glopent.net). This research started with fieldwork in Nigeria, and included fieldwork in Germany, the Netherlands and England.

I approach the subject of religion in the public sphere through a focus on spatial practices such as mapping. I am interested in how imaginary and actual visual maps (religious and non-religious) overlap and constitute urban public spaces as well as transnational public spheres. Furthermore, I am interested in how the materiality and factuality of religious buildings structure (urban) spaces, peoples' routines, routes and identity politics.

2001- 2007 (PhD research)
religious change in the Netherlands, based on fieldwork in the Catholic South. This was part of the reseach project 'between secularization and sacralization' led by prof. dr. André Droogers at the VU university of Amsterdam.

2004: religious change among the Kalinga and Catalangan in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, Philippines (CML/ CVPED)

Areas of expertise:

Transnational religious networks
religion in the public sphere
Pentecostalism
Catholicism
Spiritualism and New Age
Secularization/sacralization theories/ religious change in Europe
(healing) rituals
theories of embodiment
phenomenology in anthropology
Netherlands, Philippines and Nigeria.