Y.H.J.K. Schattevoet MA (Yentl)

Yentl Schattevoet MA is an external PhD candidate at the department of Textual, Historical and Systematic Studies of Judaism and Christianity. She graduated cum laude in Religious Studies in 2013, and won the University Study Prize for her Master thesis on contemporary Paganism in the Netherlands.

Her research interests include alternative religion, occultism, esotericism, heterodoxy and countercultural currents in general, and contemporary Paganism in particular. Her current focus is on the history of religion, especially German Romanticism, with an emphasis on nationalism, the invention of tradition, perception, and the interaction between attribution and appropriation.

For her PhD research, titled 'Rooting for the Pagan Past: From a National Identity to a Religious Identity', Yentl Schattevoet examines the German Romantic perceptions of the concept 'pagan' in the context of nationalism, and how a positive revaluation of the past became the fertile soil from which the contemporary religious identity of the Pagan emerged. There is a special focus on identity formation and a critical evaluation of the theory of the invention of tradition.

• Contemporary Paganism, German Romanticism, nationalism, identity, perception