dr. J.M. Bakker (Justine)

I am an assistant professor in Comparative Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. I research the intersections of race and religion, with a specific focus on modern alternative, heterodox, and esoteric forms of religiosity and method and theory in religious studies. My work has appeared in the journals Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Aries, Correspondences, and several edited volumes. I was awarded funding by the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, the Flanders Research Foundation, or FWO, Humboldt Postdoc Fellowship (declined), and Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship (declined).

Together with David Kline, I published the volume Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion, which came out with Fordham University Press in june 2025. The book makes the case that Wynter, an influential Caribbean philosopher and cultural critic, should also be engaged by scholars of religion. Wynter challenges religious studies to (re)think colonialism, race, and constructs of the human. The political theology network published a series on the book, see: https://politicaltheology.com/sylvia-wynter-and-religion/.

In 2023, together with Tanya Cheadle (University of Glasgow), I began the ongoing “Normative Esotericism” project, which seeks to investigate the regulation of sex, gender, and race in modern alternative spirituality. Alternative forms of spirituality are frequently considered subversive or marginal; we study how and when such spiritualities (also) become normative. This project is funded by the Radboud-Glasgow Collaboration Fund.

I'm also working on a project on the historical and contemporary spread, use, and regulation of the occult books of Lauron William de Laurence in the US, the Caribbean, and West Africa. This project was awarded funding by the Crossroads Project (Princeton University), which allowed me to do research at the Schomburg Center.