Bio-CV

Bio

I was born in Belgium in 1962 from a Belgian mother (she was born and grew up in Flanders) and a German father. My father had come from Munich after WWII as a teenager with his mom. His family came from a place close to the Polish border called Furth im Wald. I think most of the Ochsenmeiers are still in that area and overall in Bavaria and are related one way or the other to each other. Unfortunately, I have actually never been to Munich or Bavaria (feel free to invite me!). I became Belgian when I was 7 or 8. We, the five of us, grew up in Brussels speaking French but hearing Dutch and German all the time. I took English and Spanish at University and spent a couple of summers in England and in Spain (Southampton and Lincoln for English; Málaga and Burgos in a Mennonite community for Spanish). I studied and worked in the USA from 1989 to 1996 (Denver and Atlanta, where my wife is from) and have been back in Belgium since 1996. I still spend on average four to six weeks a year in the USA. I am married with two children.

My main interests and hobbies, besides theology, literature, and work stuff, are reading and music. I have been trying to learn to play guitar for about thirty years but am rather hopeless. As far as reading is concerned, I like detective novels (English or Swedish mostly) and classics (mostly Proust and Dante for the moment).

The rest is pretty much in my CV.

CV

I am currently the General Secretary of the Groupes Bibliques Universitaires de Belgique (an organization affiliated with Ifes). I have also been director of Réflexions, an organization that focuses on religion and culture in French speaking Europe, since 1996.

From 1998 to 2007 I was Dean of the Institut Biblique Belge, a higher education institution delivering degrees in theology, where I also taught, mostly New Testament. I resigned from that position because after about ten years I just wanted to do something else.

From 1994 to 1999, I worked as a free lance translator and computer consultant in Atlanta, GA (USA) until 1996 then in Brussels, Belgium.

From 1992 until June 1994 I worked as Lan Administrator at Jackson and Coker, in Atlanta.

I am a member of the Society of Biblical Literature (USA) and of the Tyndale Fellowship in Cambridge (UK).