Peter van Rooden obtained his Ph.D. in 1985 at Leiden University (cum laude). His thesis was published in 1989: Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn L' Empereur (1591-1648), Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden: Brill). In 1996 he published a study of the radical changes in the relation between religion, society, and political power in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century: Religieuze Regimes. Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland, 1570-1999 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker). During the academic year 1997/98 he was a visiting professor at the History Department of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2010-2011 a visiting fellow at the Ruhr-Universitaet, Bochum, participating the research program Dynamics in the History of Religion. He is currently working on a book about the radical dechristianisation which took place in the Netherlands since the 1960s, based on oral history. He likes biking.