Peter van der Veer is a Dutch academic who is the Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen in Germany. He has taught anthropology at the Free University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University and the University of Pennsylvania. Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. Van der Veer published a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China, entitled The Modern Spirit of Asia. The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India (Princeton University Press, 2013) Among his other major publications are Gods on Earth (LSE Monographs, 1988), Religious Nationalism (University of California Press, 1994), and Imperial Encounters (Princeton University Press, 2001). Source: Wikipedia (en)