Katja Rakow is associate professor Religious Studies. She studied Religious Studies, Anthropology and Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. In 2010, she received her PhD in Religious Studies from Heidelberg University. In her dissertation she analyzed transformation and innovation processes in Tibetan Buddhism in the West. In two post-doctoral research projects on Christian megachurches in the United States and Singapore, she looked at the material dimension of religious norms and practices in contemporary Pentecostalism with regard to religious economies, branding strategies and their distribution in global networks. From 2013 to 2015, she was PI of the Research Group "Transcultural Dynamics of Pentecostalism in Singpore" at the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context "at Heidelberg University. Since 1 September 2015, she works at Utrecht University.

She currently works on "Practicing Texts", a material approach to the study of religious texts and textual practices related to religions. She is also one of the editors of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief.

• Link to my Academia.edu-profile