Anna Blijdenstein is working as a PhD researcher at the faculty of philosophy and as a core tutor in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics (PPLE)  at the University of Amsterdam. She studied Political Science and graduated Cum Laude from the Master Political Theory and Behavior and the Master Philosophy of Science. Before her current position she acquired both academic and teaching experience working as a junior lecturer in the political science department.

Her current research is part of the NWO-funded project Critique of religion and the framing of Jews and Muslims in Political Theory and Public Debate. The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. H.Y.M. (Yolande) Jansen. Fellow PhD candidate: Matthea Westerduin (VUA).

PhD Project: Liberalism’s Dangerous Religions. Enlightenment legacies in Political Theory

Her project provides a conceptual-historical analysis of the dynamic between religious critique and the framing of Jews and Muslims in Enlightenment thought. It then examines the contributions of contemporary liberal philosophers debating religious freedom in light of that conceptual history. The first part of the project discusses the ways in which the ‘remaking of religion’ in European Enlightenment thought was connected to representations of Judaism and Islam. The second half of project asks which of these representations and conceptualizations of religion, Jews and Muslims, can be traced in contemporary political theory. It show that the history of liberal political theory and its treatment of non-Christian religions, especially Judaism and Islam has left us with problematic legacies concerning religion – legacies that are even traceable in those contemporary versions of liberalism that deal with religion in a relatively nuanced way.

For an interview on the research project  see here.