Dr. Margreet Van Es

Biography

Margreet van Es is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, where her research lies at the intersection of religion, media, gender, food, cosmopolitanism, and belonging, with a special focus on Muslims in Europe. Currently, she is affiliated with the NWO-financed research project ‘Religious Matters Entangled World’, led by Professor Birgit Meyer, where she studies the emergence of trendy, alcohol-free halal restaurants in Rotterdam. Van Es teaches courses such as ‘The Sociology of Religion’, ‘Religion and Conflict’, ‘Fundamentalism in Christianity and Islam’, and ‘Doing Research in Religious Studies’. In 2022, she became a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, a select group of enthusiastic and ambitious young academics at Utrecht University collaborating across disciplines to influence decision-making processes in academia, policy, and wider society. She studied History at Leiden University and obtained her PhD from the University of Oslo in Norway. From 2016 to 2018, Van Es worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University, contributing to the project ‘Muslims Condemning Violent Extremism’, financed by the European Committee’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fund (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015). Her PhD thesis and postdoctoral research focused on Islamophobia (anti-Muslim racism) in the Netherlands and Norway, analyzing how Muslims fight stereotypes and make critical contributions to public debates on terrorism and women's emancipation. In October 2017, she organized the international research conference ‘Religious Minorities' Self-Representations: Claims of Difference and Sameness in the Politics of Belonging’.

Research Interests

Experience