Kees de Groot is Professor in Worldviews and Public Mental Health (KSGV Chair) at Tilburg University (Netherlands). He represents the Benelux at the council of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and the Netherlands at COST Action Program "Connecting Theory and Practical Issues of Migration and Religious Diversity” (COREnet). He has published on Zygmunt Bauman, Catholicism, chaplaincy, mental health care, rituals, theatre, and comics in Social Compass, Implicit Religion and various volumes in and on the empirical study of religion. His latest monograph in English is The Liquidation of the Church (Routledge, 2018). In 2023, Bloomsbury Academic published Comics, culture, and religion: Faith imagined, a volume that he edited and contributed to chapters to.
Since September 2019, the KSGV has appointed me as a professor for sociology of religion and public mental health. I study the institutional dynamics of spiritual care and mental health care, and the, often implicit, role of religion and worldviews in societal developments.
I teach at the department of practical theology and religious studies, and participate in the research program Religion and Practice.
In 2021, I was a guest professor at the University of Agder and appointed as a member of the Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters.
In 2023, I was appointed as a member of the Management Committee of the COST Action Program "Connecting Theory and Practical Issues of Migration and Religious Diversity” (COREnet).
I am collaborating with VID University (Oslo) on an international research project focusing on faith-based social support to migrants in a secular context.
In 2023/2024 I teach a module on qualitative methods in the Master Religion, Philosophy and Society at the Universiy of Agder.