Dr. des. Bastiaan Van Rijn

Bücher:

• Mit Jens Schlieter and Sarah Perez, eds. Accepted. Intentional Transformative Experiences:Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism. Berlin: De Gruyter.
• 2023. "The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death." PhD diss., University of Bern [unpublished as of yet].
   

Artikel und Buchkapitel:

• Accepted. "Building a Typology for Intentional Transformative Experiences: Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet's Experiments with Magnetic Somnambulism and Hashish." In Intentional Transformative Experiences:Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism, edited by Jens Schlieter, Sarah Perez, and Bastiaan van Rijn. Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Mit Markus Altena Davidsen. 2020. “Studying Religions as Narrative Cultures: Angel Experience Narratives in the Netherlands and Some Ideas for a Narrative Research Program for the Study of Religion.” In Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion, edited by Dirk Johannsen, Anja Kirsch, and Jens Kreinath, 91–122. Leiden: Brill.
• 2017. "The Mind Behind the Cards." MA Thesis, Leiden University. Awarded the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018 (NGG).
   

Buchrezensionen:

• 2024. [Review of the book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin: Facts and Fictions in Science, Religion, and Art, by J. W. Buisman]. Journal of Religious History, preprint.
• Mit Sarah Perez 2023. [Review of the book Virtual Immortality God, Evolution and the Singularity in Post and Transhumanism, by O. Krüger]. Journal of Posthuman Studies 6 (1): 89–94.
• Mit Sarah Perez. 2022. [Review of the book Virtualität und Unsterblichkeit – Gott, Evolution und die Singularität im Post- und Transhumanismus, by O. Krüger]. Zeitschrift für Junge Religionswissenschaft 17.
• 2019. [Review of the book Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism, by E. Ogden]. Correspondences 7(2), 505–10.

Vorträge:

• September 6, 2023. “Weighing Souls and Sculpting Spirits: The Spiritual Machinery of Matla and Zaalberg van Zelst,” Religions and Technologies, EASR, University of Vilnius.
• June 27, 2023. “Cards, Guides, the Unconscious, or Spirit: The Practical Consequences of Tarot Practitioners’ Notions of how their Practice Works,” Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Malmö University.
• October 21, 2022. “Between Science and Religion: Proving the Afterlife through Animal Magnetism,” Animal Magnetism in Motion: Reconfigurations and Circulations, 1776-1848, University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
• September 2, 2022. “The Beginning of an Afterlife-centered Experimental Culture,” Experiments with Experience, University of Bern.
• June 29, 2022. “Liberating the Afterlife Through Science: Spiritual Animal Magnetizer's Attempts at Overcoming Empirical Limits,” Religion and States of Freedom, EASR, University College Cork.
• With Sarah Perez. June 17, 2022. “A Harsh Reality: Conceptualizing a New Spiritual Response to Devastating Crises,” Humanities Faculty Symposium, University of Leiden.
• May 14, 2022. “A Matter of Life and Death: Experimental Systems of the Supernatural,” Collegium Generale: Experimente, University of Bern.
• April 28, 2022. “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed... Contemporary (Animal) Magnetism's Conceptualization of Healing Energies,” Subtle Energies: Explorations within Holistic Healing and Spirituality, University of Vienna.
• April 8, 2022. “Afterlife Researches: 170 Years of Shared Experimental Styles and Problems,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
• With Sarah Perez. September 17, 2021. “Confronting Death: Inspiring Innovation through Interdisciplinary Dialogues,” Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Death Rituals: Materializing the Absent, University of Bern.
• September 2, 2021. “Taming the Religious Vision: Animal Magnetizers’ Attempt of Scientification Through Replication and Verification in the 19th Century,” Resilient Religion, EASR, University of Pisa.
• August 30, 2021. “Spiritual Animal Magnetism as a Science of Transformative Experiences: The Case Study of Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet,” Intentional Transformative Experiences: Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Philosophy, University of Bern.
• March 26, 2021. “A Spiritual Science: Analyzing the Work of Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
• October 25, 2019. “The Experimental Culture of Animal Magnetism,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
• With Jens Schlieter and Friedemann Rimbach-Sator. July 3, 2019. “Experiments with Experience: Spiritual Practice as Scientific Experimentation,” Western Esotericism and Consciousness: Visions, Voices, Altered States, ESSWE, University of Amsterdam. 
• With Jens Schlieter and Friedemann Rimbach-Sator. June 26, 2019. “Experiments with Experience: Spiritual Practice as Scientific Experimentation,” Religion – Continuations and Disruptions, EASR, University of Tartu. 
• May 9, 2019. “Seks, Drugs en Geesten: Mesmerisme, Spiritualisme en Occultisme in de 19e eeuw”, T.F.L.S. [student association] lecture, Leiden University. 
• April 30, 2018. “Divine Help From Above: Narratives of Angelic Signs and Interventions”, Stories of the Supernatural: Encounters with the Other Side in Literary and Everyday Narratives, Leiden Symposium on New Religiosity, Leiden University.
• With Marlies van de Bunt. November 24, 2017. “Religious Narratives as Plausibility Structures,” Research Traineeship Conference, Leiden University.
• With Markus Altena Davidsen and Marlies van de Bunt. May 19, 2017. “Religious Narratives as Plausibility Structures,” Tri-University Research Colloquium Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam.
   

Populärwissenschaftliche Beiträge:

• Interviewed von Simone Lippuner. December 30, 2022. “Niemand weiss, ob Engel wirklich existieren.” Berner Zeitung / Der Bund.
• Mit Marlies van de Bunt. 2017. “Antieke orakels en aartsengelen in spijkerbroeken.” Leidenreligieblog.nl

Forschungsschwerpunkte:

• Mesmerismus, mit einem Fokus auf spirituellem Mesmerismus
• Wissenschaft und Religion, mit einem Fokus auf Experimentation
• Zeitgenössische Spiritualität mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Divination
• Religion und ‚Playfulness‘
• Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
   

Forschungsprojekt:

Experiments with Experience: Experimenting with Religions and Spiritual Practice as Experimentation (SNF-Project)

Within the Experiments with Experience project, I research the works of spiritual animal magnetizers. My goal is to explore how they used discourse on experimentation to build frameworks in which their views of life after death were (in their eyes) proven experimentally. I analyse their strategies to better understand the logic of experimentation of these actors. Furthermore, in a broader sense, I compare this logic to other ‘afterlife studies’ such as Spiritualism and near-death experience research to trace historical continuities and differences. These two research lines come together in the concept of  the 'experimental culture of afterlife research,' which I hold to have arisen in the late eighteenth century, and which has continued in different forms up until today. The project should give new insights into the theorization of the interactions between ‘science’ and ‘religion,’ as well as give a new interpretation of several understudied figures in (especially) the history of animal magnetism and related currents.

Akademischer Lebenslauf:

• Ab 2023: Assistent am Institut der Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bern.
• 2019–2023: Doktorand am Institut der Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bern. SNF-Forschungsprojekt: Experiments with Experience: Experimenting with Religions and Spiritual Practice as Experimentation.
• 2013–2017: BA und MA-Studium, Study of Religion, Leiden University. MA-Arbeit: The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination's Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis.