When coming to the university in 2003, it was mainly her love for language and the desire to learn something entirely new, that motivated Tine to enter the field of Oriental Languages and Cultures. She discovered the wonderful world of Hindi, Sanskrit, and Arabic. As time went by, she got more and more interested in modern South-Asian politics and religions, and in South-Asian Migrant communities. She graduated in 2007 with a master thesis titled Hindutva and the Dalits, analyzing the ways in which the Hindu religious-nationalist movements try to incorporate the lower castes and outcasts. In the ManaMa Conflict and Development, she spent a year expanding her knowledge of contemporary India, international politics and globalization.
After graduating, Tine worked in the migration-sector, as a translator, and as an intercultural advisor. It is from that backdrop that she rejoined Ghent University as a researcher in 2013. In April 2019 she was awarded a doctoral degree on the basis of her research into the impact of digital media on cultural identity and religious praxis in Jain migrant-communities. In that same year, she won a FWO Junior Postdoctoral grant, to start working on a new research project on the continuing role of twice-migration in the lives of 'East-African' Jains in the UK. On September 1st 2022, Tine became the first scholar to be appointed to the newly created Ācārya Mahāprajña Chair for Jain Studies.
Her fields of expertise are:
- Migration, Migration and Memory, esp. South Asian Diaspora
- Religion, Digital Religion, esp. Jainism
- Modern History of South Asia
