dr. K.E. (Kim) Knibbe

Kim Knibbe is Associate Professor Anthropology and Sociology of Religion. Grounding her work in ethnographic research, she theorize the ways religion is a factor in contemporary societies and interacts with secularity, particularly around the themes gender and sexuality and, more recently, reproduction. Her curiosity is guided by the question of how people navigate between what they consider to be 'given'  and what they believe to be human-made and therefore subject to change. Ongoing collaborative research examines experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in the Philippines, Kenya and Netherlands and religious and secular appraoches to preventing unintended pregnancy and/or supporting those unintentionally pregnant. Previous research has focused on Catholicism and spirituality in the Netherlands and Nigerian Pentecostalism in Europe and the Netherlands. She has also published a series of theoretical and methodological reflections on studying religion ethnographically. For students: I only accept supervision of projects that employ qualitative research methods. I particularly welcome students who wish to do research on contemporary spirituality, Catholicism or Pentecostalism related to questions of gender/sexuality/kinship/pregnancy and motherhood.

Member of the Board of the Catharina Halkesfonds
Secretary of the Wessel Ganzevoort fund
Treasurer European Association for the Study of Religions