Rijk van Dijk

Rijk van Dijk is an anthropologist. He is an expert on Pentecostalism, globalization and transnationalism, migration, youth and healing. He has been appointed Professor by special appointment of Religion and Sexuality in Africa at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam as of 1 October 2013.

Rijk van Dijk has done extensive research on the rise of Pentecostal movements in the urban areas of Malawi, Ghana and Botswana. He is the author of Young Malawian Puritans (Utrecht, ISOR Press, 1993) and has co-edited seven other books including The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma (Oxford, James Currey 2000) with Ria Reis and Marja Spierenburg, and Situating Globality. African Agency in the Appropriation of Global Culture (Leiden, Brill 2004) with Wim van Binsbergen.

His current research deals with religious, in particular Pentecostal, engagement with the domains of sexuality and HIV/AIDS in Botswana. A recently published article entitled 'Counselling and Pentecostal modalities of social engineering of relationships in Botswana' (2013) deals with insights gained from his ongoing research. He is also the chair of the International Research Network on Religion and AIDS in Africa (IRNARA) and the editor-in-chief of the journal African Diaspora. A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World which has been published by Brill since 2008.

Rijk van Dijk is a guest professor of Ethnology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Within the programme Life Skills, Counselling and the Ethics of Responsibility he is doing research on 'The Social Life of Responsibilization. Marriage as a "Life-Project" in Botswana'. 
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