My interest in the study of other human beings, their cultures, and their religious understandings and rituals started in 2003. That year, I traveled outside of Europe for the first time in my life. As volunteer in Ghana, I had the opportunity to engage with life worlds that felt both alien to my own, while at the same time similar and approachable. 

The following six years, I learned how to make sense of the apparent paradox of being familiar and strange at the same time. I began with a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, followed by a BA in Comparative Religious Studies (both at Radboud University, Nijmegen). 

In 2009, my MA in Cultural Anthropology allowed me to visit China for the first time, to conduct ethnographic research on the Chinese pilgrimage island Putuoshan. On this island, I became acquainted with Guanyin, a bodhisattva central to Chinese Buddhism. 

I ended by career as a student with an MA in Comparative Religious Studies, with research based on an internship at the Knowledge Centre of Religion and Development (part of development organization Oikos), on the relation between religion and development work.

From February 2012 to July 2016, I followed a PhD program at the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University (Australia). My PhD research introduced me to a new fieldwork site: Hong Kong - an Asian city of over 7 million inhabitants. In my research, I investigated the ways in which religion (Catholicism and Buddhism) features in an East Asian urban setting. I argued that urban life in Hong Kong, marked by unsettling political and economic developments, is for some individuals colored by their religious orientations. The uncertain political years leading up to the 2014 Umbrella Movement were symbolized in the title of my dissertation: "In the eye of the typhoon: Aspirations of Buddhists and Catholics in turbulent Hong Kong."

While being a PhD student, I also got introduced to the joys of teaching and engaging with students. At Macquarie University, I had the opportunity to tutor multiple courses on various topics. Since 2016, I have held several teaching positions in the Netherlands, in which I have managed to develop myself further as teacher, and through which my passion for teaching has grown. 

From 2019 to 2022 I was a postdoc researcher in a HERA-funded research on cemeteries and crematoria as public spaces of belonging in Europe. My research part focuses on places of remembrance in Leeuwarden, Maastricht (both in the Netherlands) and Luxembourg-city.

Currently, I work as assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Utrecht University. I teach multiple courses in the department, and supervise students on their Bachelor and Master projects.