Wouter Hanegraaff

Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff
Wouter Hanegraaff, 2006
Born	(1961-04-10)10 April 1961 Amsterdam
Nationality	Dutch
Citizenship	Netherlands
Alma mater	University of Utrecht
Occupation	Professor
Employer	University of Amsterdam

Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff (born 1961) is full professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He served as the first President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) from 2005 to 2013.

Hanegraaff was raised as the son of a theologian. He originally studied classical guitar at the Municipal Conservatory at Zwolle from 1982 to 1987, and cultural history at the University of Utrecht from 1986 to 1990. From 1992 to 1996 he was a Research Fellow at the department for the Study of Religions at the University of Utrecht. From 1996 to 1999 Hanegraaff held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Dutch Association for Scientific Research (NWO), during which time he spent a period working in Paris. In 1999 he became professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. From 2002 to 2006 he has been president of the Dutch Society for the Study of Religion, and, from 2005 to 2013, president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. In 2006 he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is now an hononrary member of the ESSWE.

His dissertation New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought was published by Brill in 1996. Two years later a USA paperback version was published by State University of New York Press. This work constitutes one of the first non-polemical academic reviews of the New Age movement, presenting an analysis on the basis of its important texts. It covers important authors, themes, aspects of New Age belief, and finally looks at the New Age in the context of traditional Western esotericism. It has helped pave the way for a number of further studies that have appeared in various journals, concerning the New Age phenomenon.