Wim M J van Binsbergen

WIM VAN BINSBERGEN (*1947) was trained in sociology, anthropology, and general linguistics, at Amsterdam University (Municipal). He held professorships in the social sciences at Leiden, Manchester, Durban, Berlin, and Amsterdam (Free University). At the latter institution he took his cum laude doctorate (1979) and was the incumbent of the chair of ethnic studies (1990-1998), prior to acceding to the chair of Foundations of Intercul-tural Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Simultaneously,...See more

WIM VAN BINSBERGEN (*1947) was trained in sociology, anthropology, and general linguistics, at Amsterdam University (Municipal). He held professorships in the social sciences at Leiden, Manchester, Durban, Berlin, and Amsterdam (Free University). At the latter institution he took his cum laude doctorate (1979) and was the incumbent of the chair of ethnic studies (1990-1998), prior to acceding to the chair of Foundations of Intercul-tural Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Simultaneously, he held senior appointments at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. Over the decades, he has established himself internationally as a specialist on African ethnicity, African religion, ethnohistory, globalisation, intercultural philosophy, comparative mythology, the Mediterranean Bronze Age, and transcontinental continuities between Africa and Asia in pre- and proto-history. He was President of the Netherlands Association of African Studies, 1990-1993, and one of the Founding Members / Directors of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, 2005-2020. From 2002 he has been the Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie. His many books include Religious Change in Zambia (1981), Tears of Rain (1992), Intercultural Encounters (2003), Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory (with Fred Woudhuizen, 2011); Black Athena Comes of Age (2011), Before the Presocratics (2012), Vicarious Reflections (2015), Religion as a Social Construct (2017), Researching Power and Identity in African State Formation (with Martin Doornbos, 2017), Confronting the Sacred: Durkheim Vindicated (2018), Rethinking Africa's Transcontinental Continuities in Pre- and Proto-history (2019, ed.), and Sunda: Pre- and Proto-historical Contiinuities between Asia and Africa (2020). His published work is also freely available at http: //www.quest-journal.net/shikanda . Wim van Binsbergen is married with the classical singer and breathing therapist Patricia Saegerman, and has five adult children. Besides his scholarly work, he is a published poet, the adopted son of a Zambian king, and a certified African traditional healer in the Southern African sangoma tradition. See less