Peter van der Veer


Peter van der Veer is a Dutch academic who is the Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen in Germany. He has taught Anthropology at the Free University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University and the University of Pennsylvania. Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe.
Van der Veer published a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China, entitled The Modern Spirit of Asia. The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India Among his other major publications are Gods on Earth, Religious Nationalism, and Imperial Encounters.

Life and career

In 1992 he was appointed 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 the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam, as well as Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam, and was Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, both in Leiden. In 1994 he was appointed University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position he continues to hold. He has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New School in New York, and National University of Singapore.
Van der Veer 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 and a member of several advisory boards, including The Prayer Project of the Social Science Research Council in New York.
Van der Veer was editor or co-editor of Orientalism and Post-Colonial Predicament, Nation and Migration, Conversion to Modernities, Nation and Religion, Media, War, and Terrorism, Patterns of Middle-Class Consumption in India and China. Most recently he edited the Handbook of Religion and the Asian City. Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century.
Van der Veer serves on the Advisory Board of China in Comparative Perspective, Political Theology, and the Journal of Religious and Political Practice. He has just started a new journal: Cultural Diversity in China.

Representative publications