Visiting Scholar
Heidelberg University

Julian Strube works on a DFG-funded postdoc project entitled "Tantra Within the Context of a Global Religious History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," which focuses on the exchanges between Bengali and Western intellectuals in colonial Bengal. The leading themes of his research are the relationship between religion and politics, as well as the debates about the meaning of religion, science, and philosophy since the nineteenth century. He studied Medieval/Modern History and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University (M.A. 2010). His studies and a temporary appointment as associate professor led him to the University of Amsterdam in the years 2009 and 2018, respectively. In the context of his M.A. thesis, he worked on the relationship between völkisch movements, National Socialism, neo-Nazism, and esotericism. This resulted in his first monograph about the fictitious energy Vril and its reception since the nineteenth century (Wilhelm Fink 2013). In 2015, he received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies for his dissertation on the relationship between Socialism, Catholicism, and Occultism in Nineteenth-Century France (published by De Gruyter in 2016). He is currently co-editing the volume Theosophy Across Boundaries with Hans-Martin Krämer for the State University of New York Press. While at the Department in the 2018 winter semester, Dr Strube co-ordinates a course on "Esotericism and Far-Right Extremism."