Photo: Elmer Spaargaren
Peter Berger studied ethnology, sociology and religious studies at the Free University of Berlin from 1993 till1998 and received his doctorate in ethnology in 2004. From 1999 to 2007, he was a lecturer and research assistant at the Institute for Ethnology at the Free University of Berlin. Since 2007 he has been a lecturer for Indian religions and ethnology of religion at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. There he headed the Department Comparative Study of Religion (2014-2019) for six years. In addition, he was Research Consultant at the University of London (SOAS, 2010), Visiting Professor at the University of Zurich (2012), Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at LMU Munich (2015) and will be Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi in 2021/22.
His research interests include socio-cultural anthropology, the theory and history of anthropology, ethnology of religion and indigenous religions. Related to this, he is particularly concerned with issues of values, cosmology, ritual, food, agriculture, death, and cultural and religious change. His regional expertise focuses on India, especially on the tribal societies (Adivasi) of Odisha.
In cooperation with the director of the Frobenius Institute Roland Hardenberg, Peter Berger founded the Groningen-Frankfurt Millets Network. This network was founded to bring together scholars from interdisciplinary fields who are interested in studying millet within the framework of their respective subject areas, in relation to socio-cultural contexts, region and history.
