Peter van der Veer

Peter van der Veer is a Dutch anthropologist who has made important scholarly contributions by challenging earlier perceptions regarding Indian religion and society.^[1] Formerly Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Religion and Society Research Centre at the University of Amsterdam, van der Veer is currently University Professor at Utrecht University.

Life and career

Van der Veer was born in 1953, in Groningen, Netherlands, and received his doctorate from the Utrecht University in 1986.

He is Editor of the Routledge series "Zones of Religion" and holds editorial positions at several scholarly journals including Eastern Anthropologist, Public Culture, Cultural Dynamics, Ethnos, and MERA-Journal.

He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2002,^[2] from which he received the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize for Behavioural and Social Sciences in 2001.

Representative publications

• The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Secular and the Spiriual in India and China, Princeton: Princeton University Press (also Chinese translation forthcoming 2014).
• Islam en het "beschaafde" Westen. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Meulenhoff, 2002.
• Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. University of California Press, 1994.
• Gods on Earth: Religious Experience and Identity in Ayodhya. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Edited works

• Religious Networks in Asia and Beyond. Book Issue Encounters.London: I.B. Tauris and New York: MacMillan.
• Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China (with Christophe Jaffrelot). New Delhi: Sage.
• Media, War and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia (with Shoma Munshi). London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (with Hartmut Lehmann). Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, 1995.

Notes

1. Barbara Metcalf review on Princeton University Press Web site
2. "Peter van der Veer" (in Dutch). Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 July 2015.

External links

• Van der Veer's Utrecht University Faculty Profile (in Dutch)