Martijn Oosterbaan studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He acquired his PhD at the Amsterdam School of Social science Research, University of Amsterdam. While finishing his dissertation he obtained a Postdoc position at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, as a researcher in the NWO research project New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture. In 2014 he became Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University and in August 2022 he was appointed professor (chair: Anthropology of Religion and Security).

Martijn Oosterbaan has published on religion, media, security, and the city in Brazil and in Europe (see publications). His research focuses among other things on urban and religious transformations in Brazil in relation to (in)security and the widespread use of mass media and popular culture (carnival, telenovelas, superheroes).

Expertises

Anthropology of religion and media, religious conflict, violence and security, Brazil, urban studies 

Research

Martijn Oosterbaan is the PI of the ERC Consolidator research project: Sacralizing Security: Religion, Violence and Authority in Mega-Cities of the Global South.pdf. More information about the project is available on the SACRASEC project page and the SoSCo Anthropology research website.

Martijn Oosterbaan was 

• Co-applicant of the NWO funded research project: 'The Popular Culture of Illegality: Criminal Authority and the Politics of Aesthetics in Latin America and the Caribbean' on the aesthetic practices that shape the socio-political authority of criminal gangs.
• Co-applicant of the NWO funded research project 'From Football Wives to Women's Football: An Interdisciplinary Research on the Social Impact of Women's and Girls' Football in The Netherlands.
• Cooperating partner of the international research program Global Prayers: Redemption and Liberation in the City that ran from 2010 till 2014 (http://globalprayers.info).