Research projects 

2021-2025: Heritage and the Question of Conversion. Wp3b (with Peter Pels) in Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums. NWA (National Science Agenda), NWO.

2016-2024: Religious Matters in an Entangled World. Things, Food, Bodies and Texts as Entry Points to the Material Study of Religion in Plural Settings. Research program made possible thanks to the Spinoza-award (NWO) and the Academyprofessor prize (KNAW). 

2013-2016: Iconic religion. How Imaginaries of Religious Encounter Structure Urban Space (ICOREL), with Prof Volkhard Krech, Bochum (PL) and Prof Kim Knott (Lancaster); BM is the PI for the Dutch sub-project, 1 postdoc. 

2013-2016: Currents of faith, places of history: religious diasporas, connections, moral circumscriptions and world-making in the Atlantic space, (CURRENTS), with Dr Ramon Sarro, Lisbon/Bergen (PL), Dr David Berliner, Brussels, and Dr Ramon Sarro (Oxford); BM is the PI for the Dutch sub-project (2 part-time postdocs). 

2012-2017: 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].