Professor Peter van der Veer

Professor, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity 

Peter van der Veer is Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Gottingen. He taught Anthropology at the Free University in Amsterdam, at Utrecht University and at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1992 he was appointed as Professor of Comparative Religion and Founding Director of the Research Center in Religion and Society in the Social Science Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. He served as Dean of the Social Science Faculty and as Dean of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam and as Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Study, both in Leiden. In 1994 he was appointed as University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position he continues to hold. He held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the New School in New York, and the National University of Singapore. He received the Hendrik Muller Award for his social science study of religion. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. He has just finished a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China. Among his major publications are Gods on Earth (LSE Monographs, 1988), Religious Nationalism (University of California Press, 1994), and Imperial Encounters (Princeton University Press, 2001). He was editor or co-editor of Orientalism and Post-Colonial Predicament (university of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), Nation and Migration (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), Conversion to Modernities (Routledge 1997), Nation and Religion (Princeton University Press, 1999), Media, War, and Terrorism (Routledge-Curzon 2003) , Patterns of Middle-Class Consumption in India and China (Sage 2007).

Professor van der Veer serves on the Advisory Board of Public Culture, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Culture and Religion, Domains, Cultural Dynamics, China in Comparative Perspective.