Markha Valenta

Background

About Markha Valenta

I study the geopolitics of diversity, with a focus on the influence of global relations on democracies. I am interested in comparative approaches across space (North America, Western Europe, South Asia) and time (contemporary, 19th century and early modernity). Trained in American Studies to ask “big” questions about pluralism, democracy, violence, and justice, I now study those questions from a globalist and comparative perspective and at the intersection of multiple disciplines (Politics, Anthropology, History, Religion Studies). My current academic interests concern how the interplay of geopolitics, democracy and religion have shaped planetary society, with a particular interest on the linkages and tensions between different levels from the most local (neighborhoods) to the most inter- and transnational. Research themes include the relation between (geo)politics and religion, as well as between political equality and socio-economic violence; the rise and decline of the US as a world power; the globalization of the Netherlands; borders as violence; afterlives of colonialism, slavery and bonded labor; and the rise of the Global South. I give shape to this work in diverse fora and forms, including academic research projects, academic service, teaching, community engagement, public speaking and writing. Current projects focus on US (geo)politics in the Middle East in relation to the genocide of Native Peoples; the interplay between global, local and religious diversity politics in the postcolonial Netherlands; and the citizenship of Muslims and migrants in democracies. I am currently Director of Education at the Utrecht Center for Global Challenges (UGlobe), as well as Community Engagement Ambassador at University College Utrecht. In 2021, I was Urban Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. From 2014 to 2019, I was Director of the BA program in American Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (Netherlands) and from 2020 to 2024 the President of the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA).