Dr J.M. Bakker (Justine)

I am an assistant professor in Comparative Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. Broadly, my work concentrates on the intersections of race and religion. It encompasses two broad research foci. Firstly, a study of alternative and esoteric forms of religion in the African diaspora. I have written most extensively about the Nation of Islam, as esoteric religion. Secondly, I am concerned with conceptual and epistemological questions in the field of religious studies. What is religion? How did ideas about race inform and shape our conceptualizations of terms such as religion and esotericism?

Prior to taking up a position as Assistant Professor, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ethics and Political Philosophy, also at the RU. I am also associated with Dr. Anya Topolski's Race-Religion Constellation Project.

I obtained my PhD in Religion at Rice University, Houston TX USA (May 2020), with a dissertation that looked at Afrodiasporic literature, poetry and art as forms of parareligion, a concept I develop in conversation with the work of Sylvia Wynter. I am currently revising this project into a book manuscript.