Walter E. A. van Beek is a Dutch cultural anthropologist with a large field experience in West Africa. He performed fieldwork among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria, and among the Dogon of Mali, for over four decades. On the religions of both groups he has published extensively. He held the chair of Anthropology of Religion at Tilburg University and is Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University. In biblical studies his main interest is the Old Testament, for which his African experience is a major inspiration.

Walter contributed a chapter to As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture.