van der Ven, Johannes A.

Johannes A. van der Ven was Professor for Practical Theology / Empirical Theology at the Catholic Faculty of the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and from 2010 on associate researcher for religion and human rights at this institution. Besides his important impact on the field of Practical Theology, he is known as one of the founding fathers of Empirical Theology. The volume Entwurf einer Empirischen Theologie (Practical Theology: An Empirical Approach) from 1990 is still groundbreaking in methodological terms. His research covers a huge topical spectrum reaching from God concepts to the relationship between religion and human rights. His enormous scientific output has been awarded by an honorary doctor of Lund University, Sweden, in 1998 and the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands in 2001. Johannes van der Ven passed away in 2019.