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Trained as a cultural anthropologist and working on lived religion in Ghana for more than 20 years, Birgit Meyer studies religion from a global and post-secular perspective. Her research is driven by an urge to make sense of the shifting place and role of religion in our time, and to show that scholarly work in the field of religion is of eminent concern to understanding the shape of our world in the early 21^st century. In so doing, she seeks to synthesize grounded fieldwork and theoretical reflection in a broad multidisciplinary setting.Her main research foci are the rise and popularity of global Pentecostalism; religion, popular culture and heritage; religion and media; religion and the public sphere; religious visual culture, the senses and aesthetics.

Birgit Meyer studied religious studies and pedagogy (for disabled children) at Bremen University and cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). After her PhD defense in 1995 she was affiliated with the Research Center Religion and Society (UvA). Between 2004 and 2011 she was professor of cultural anthropology at VU University Amsterdam; since September 2011 she is professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. Between 2000 and 2006 she directed the NWO Pionier programma Modern Mass Media, Religion and the Imagination of Communities. She has conducted research on and published about colonial missions and local appropriations of Christianity, modernity and conversion, the rise of Pentecostalism in the context of neo-liberal capitalism, popular culture and video-films in Ghana, the relation between religion, media and identity, as well as on material religion and the place and role of religion in the 21^st century. Her book publications include Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure (edited with Peter Geschiere, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), Magic and Modernity. Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (edited with Peter Pels, Stanford University Press, 2003), Religion, Media and the Public Sphere (edited with Annelies Moors, Indiana University Press, 2006), and Aesthetic Formations. Media, Religion and the Senses (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Currently, she finishes her book manuscript “Your World is About to Change. Videos, Spirits and the Popular Imagination in Ghana.” She is vice-chair of the International African Institute (London), a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and one of the editors of Material Religion. In 2010-2011 she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg), Berlin. In 2011 she was awarded the Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation).

The publications listed refer to 2011 and 2012. For a full list of publications see CV.

Research projects in progress

2012-2016: Habitus and Habitat. Politics and Aesthetics of Religious World-Making. Project hosted by the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, in collaboration of the Department of Religious Studies and Theology, Utrecht University (2 PhD-students).

2010-2013: Cultural performance, belonging and citizenship in contemporary South Africa Sanpad project 10-13, I am the “Dutch partner,” in colaboration with Dr Heike Becker, University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

2010-2013: Creativity and Innovation in a World of Movement (CIM),  with Maruska Svasek (Belfast, Project leader, BM is the PI for the NL-subproject), [2 part-time postdocs]. 

2008-2013 Research grant (principal investigator) by NWO for the research program ‘Heritage Dynamics: Politics of Authentication and Aesthetics of Persuasion in Brazil, Ghana, South Africa and the Netherlands’ [3 Phd students, 1 postdoc].

RvT ICCO

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