Ramstedt, Martin

Martin Ramstedt is currently Extraordinary Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, research partner of the Law and Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and until September 2024 member of the governing board of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law. In September 2022, he finished his term of office as Scientific Director of the Oñati International Institute for Sociology of Law, Research Professor of Ikerbasque/Basque Foundation for Science and Temporary Distinguished Professor in the Law Faculty of the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián/Donostia. Prior to his academic appointment in the Autonomous Basque Community in Spain, he was Deputy Professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Cultural Sociology at the Institute for Ethnology and Philosophy, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Throughout his career, Ramstedt taught at various Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, and Indonesian universities. He has carried out extensive research and widely published on topics at the intersection of Law, Religion and Politics in different Indonesian and Indian colonial and postcolonial settings, as well as on Normative and Legal Pluralism, including the Mediation and Restorative Justice movement, from a theoretic and comparative. For twenty years, Ramstedt worked at several international research institutions: the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies in Copenhagen, the Meertens Institute (a Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences institute for Dutch Ethnology) in Amsterdam, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, the Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Studies "Law as Culture," the Royal Netherlands Institute for Linguistics and Caribbean Studies/KITLV Leiden, and the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" in Leipzig. He has done extensive fieldwork in different parts of Indonesia, India, and the Netherlands, as well as shorter stints in Singapore, Nepal, Germany, and the Basque Country. He is chief editor of the book series "Religion and Society in Asia" at Amsterdam University Press, review editor of Frontiers in Sociology – Sociology of Law, member of the editorial board of the online journal "Oñati Socio-Legal Series", global coordinator for anthropological and postcolonial approaches in the Global Access to Justice Project, and a certified mediator.