Prof. Rijk van Dijk
Vita
1992 Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Utrecht; Dissertation title “Young Malawian Puritans. Young Born-Again Preachers in a present-day African Urban Environment”.
Academic positions
2013 Dr. R. van Dijk is appointed Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam International School of Social Science Research, in a new Chair entitled the study of Religion and Sexuality in Africa.
2006– Lecturer in International Research Masters African Studies University of Leiden.
1999– Senior Researcher. African Studies Center, Leiden.
1995–1999 Post-doc researcher. NWO/WOTRO programme 'Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities'. Project: The Stranger's Scenario: Ghanaian Transnational Migration, Popular Culture and the Pentecostal Strategy.
Special assignments
199–2001 Leader of Research-team ‘Schijn van Voodoo’; Research on request by the Netherlands Police Services, Unit Human Trafficking/IRT Zwolle, on the trafficking of young Nigerian women (AMA’s) to the Netherlands and the involvement of religious forms of intimidation and coercion.
1993–1994 Leader of Observation-group and United Nations Core-group Observer to the first democratic General & Presidential Elections, Malawi.
Other academic responsibilities
2008– Editor-in-chief African Diaspora. A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World’, Leiden, Brill Publishers.
2007– Chair IRNARA International Research Network on Religion and Aids in Africa (IRNARA) This research network aims at bringing together scholars as well as (NGO-) practitioners in the field of religious engagements with the disease in Africa.
Research Areas
Religion, transnational Pentecostalism, sexuality, marriage, AIDS, agency, Christianity, modernity, youth, criminology, morality, popular culture, the gift, witchcraft, transnational migration, African diaspora, Malawi, Ghana, Botswana
Function within the Center
Research project “The Social Life of Responsibilization: Marriage as a ‘Life-Project’ in Botswana”
Abstract
Selected Publications
1. Books
2012: Mirjam de Bruijn & Rijk van Dijk (Eds.), The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa. New York: Palgrave/MacMillan.
2010: Marleen Dekker & Rijk van Dijk (Eds.), Markets of Well-being. Navigating Health and Healing in Africa. Leiden: Brill, African Dynamics Series No. 9.
2000: Rijk van Dijk, Ria Reis and Marja Spierenburg (Eds.), The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma. The Political Aspects of Healing in Southern Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 2000.
2. Thematic Issues
2012: Astrid Bochow & Rijk van Dijk (Eds.), Christianity, Sexuality and Reproduction in Southern Africa. Special Issue for Journal of Religion in Africa. Vol. 42, no. 4.
2009: Ruth Prince, Rijk van Dijk and Philippe Denis (Eds.), Christianity and HIV/AIDS in East and Southern Africa. Special Issue for Africa Today, Vol. 56, no. 1.
3. Articles
2012: Rijk van Dijk, ‘Pentecostalism as Post-Development? Exploring Religion as a Developmental Ideology in Ghanaian Migrant Communities.’ In: D. Freeman (Ed.) Pentecostalism and Development. Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa. London, Palgrave/MacMillan.
2009: Rijk van Dijk, ‘Social Catapulting and the Spirit of Entrepreneurialism: Migrants, Private Initiative, and the Pentecostal Ethic in Botswana.’ In: Gertrud Hüwelmeier & Kristine Krause (Eds.) Traveling Spirits. Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, New York: Routledge, Studies in Anthropology Series.
2003: Rijk van Dijk, ‘Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana.’ In: Africa, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 560–83.
2001: Rijk van Dijk, ‘Voodoo on the Doorstep and the Trafficking in Young Nigerian Women for the Dutch Sex Industry and its Moral Panic.’ In: Africa, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 558–586.
1997: Rijk van Dijk, ‘From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora.’ In: Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 27, no. 2, p. 135–169.