Kim Molenaar

Scientific career

Kim Molenaar is a PhD candidate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology. She studied at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and the University of Pretoria (South Africa) (BA Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology). She completed her Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. In the course of her M.A. thesis, she analysed the ways in which South African migrants in the Netherlands created a home away from home, by the use of South African products and practices.

In her PhD research, which she started in October 2016, she explores the contentious positioning of Pentecostal churches in public debates in Botswana about sexuality and gendered social relationships. Her ethnographic research is part of the project ‘The Soft Voice of Activism: Christian Lobbying and Reform in the Fields of Sexual Rights and Domestic Violence in Botswana and South Africa’ funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The project is supervised by Prof. Thomas Kirsch and co-supervised by Prof. Rijk van Dijk.

Teaching

Kim worked as a graduate teaching assistant at Leiden University from 2013 until 2016 and was involved in the following courses:

• Social Theories (Dr. Sabine Luning)
• Inequality and Development in a Sociological Perspective (Dr. Tessa Minter, Dr. Henrike Florusbosch)
• Academic Skills (Dr. Jan Jansen)
• Methods and Techniques of Social Science (Dr. Marieke Slootman)
• Economic Anthropology (Dr. Sabine Luning)

Research interests

• The anthropology of activism
• Religion studies
• Political anthropology
• Economic anthropology