Prof. Peter van der Veer

Peter van der Veer is a Director at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG), where he heads the Department of Religious Diversity. He works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. He has taught Anthropology at the Free University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University and the University of Pennsylvania. 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. 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 and a member of several advisory boards, including The Prayer Project of the SSRC in New York.