About me

I grew up in the 1980s, in a Flanders that was rapidly secularising. The tension between what was disappearing locally and what was becoming visible elsewhere sparked my interest at an early age. As a teenager, I became fascinated by the Arab world and religious texts; in the early 1990s, this led me to study religious studies and Arabic at KU Leuven. What began as curiosity developed into a lasting engagement with religion as a cultural and historical phenomenon.

After 9/11, and in the broader political and social shifts that followed “Black Sunday” in Belgium, I noticed that this interest also gained societal relevance. In the early 2000s, I collaborated on journalistic projects that sought ways of speaking about religion in a context of Flemish religious illiteracy. With Lieven Vandenhaute on Republica (Studio Brussel), we explored youth language for the big questions; on Piazza (Radio 1), I followed people and their communities over a longer period, including a year with the monks of Westvleteren, focusing on their experience of time.

I also teach Arabic as a foreign language, currently at the Language Centre of Ghent University and at CVO Scala. In this practice, I encounter a highly diverse group of learners—from people in mixed relationships and healthcare professionals to NT2 teachers, culturally engaged learners, and professionals from security and justice—and I have developed teaching materials that emphasise communicative skills and align with the CEFR for beginners.

Between 2005 and 2015, I developed a series of cultural modules on the Arab world for educational institutions and associations. This research resulted in several publications: Over de Koran (About the Koran, 2008, Mets & Schilt) and the more comprehensive Wat de Koran echt zegt (What the Koran Really Says, 2016, Davidsfonds), in which I make the academic debate on the content, structure, and history of the Koranic texts accessible to a broader audience. I also worked on the scholarship of Jacqueline Chabbi, including her video series De woorden van de Koran (The Words of the Koran), for the website and educational project jihadanders. In addition, I contributed entries to the Vademecum van de islam (2016, Damon). I am a member of EUCRES (European Centre for Religious Studies), which studies religion as a cultural phenomenon in an interdisciplinary and non-judgmental manner. I occasionally publish short contributions on Kwintessens.

Today, three strands converge: first, the question of how religious language works and which cognitive processes enable understanding; second, a research project into possible psalmic backgrounds of a Koranic text; and third, a broadening of my work to Christianity itself.

In the book project Requiem, I examine the disappearance of Flemish Catholicism—not as a mere institutional decline, but as a cultural and existential process. The book connects personal memory with the sociology of religion and theological reflection, and reads the Catholic tradition as a landscape of remnants and shifted meanings. It will be available in bookshops from 26 September; further information will follow.

Outside my professional work, I am happy doing ordinary things—often found on a road bike or spending too much time in the gym.

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The focus is on the analysis of religious language in contexts of change and secularisation.

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