List of Contributors

Gustavo Benavides is an independent scholar who lives near Philadelphia, USA. Until his retirement he taught history of religions at Villanova University. A collection of essays under the title Religion at the Intersection is in preparation.

Jason C. Bivins is Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina State University, USA. He is the author of Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion (2015); Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (2008); The Fracture of Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge to Postwar American Politics (2000).

Henrik Bogdan is Professor in History of Religions at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His recent book publications include Handbook of Freemasonry (2014, co-edited with Jan Snoek); Sexuality and New Religious Movements (2014, co-edited with James R. Lewis); Occultism in a Global Perspective (2013, co-edited with Gordan Djurdjevic); Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (2012, co-edited with Martin P. Starr).

Steve Bruce is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He has written extensively on the nature of religion in the modern world, secularization theory, and on the links between religion and politics. Recent publications include Secularization (2011) and Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland, 1900–2012 (2014).

Jeremy Carrette is Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of Kent, UK. His recent works include William James’s Hidden Religious Imagination (2013).

Giovanni Casadio is Professor of History of Religions at the University of Salerno, Italy. He is the author of six books and more than 150 papers in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, and Romanian on issues of ancient religions and historiography.

David Chidester is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His recent books are Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion (2014); Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa (2012).

John Corrigan is the Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and Professor of History at Florida State University, USA. His most recent book on emotion and religion is Emptiness: Feeling Christian in America (2015).

Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her books include (with Katharine Buljan) Anime, Religion and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (2015); The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011); Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010).

Matthew Day is Associate Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Florida State University, USA. His research focus has recently shifted from the academic study of religion to the transatlantic history of capitalism.

Albert de Jong is Professor for the Study of Religion at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He chiefly works on the premodern religious history of Iran and Central Asia, and on the history of the religious minorities of the modern Middle East.

Steven Engler is Professor of Religious Studies at Mount Royal University, Canada, Professor Colaborador at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, Brazil, and Affiliate Professor at Concordia University, Canada. He is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion (2011, with Michael Stausberg) and the Handbook of Contemporary Religions in Brazil (2016, with Bettina E. Schmidt).

Gavin Flood is the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, UK. His recent books include The Truth Within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism (2013) and The Importance of Religion: Meaning and Action in our Strange World (2011).

David Garbin is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent, UK. His fields of research include: migration and transnationalism; globalization, religion, and development; South Asian and new African diasporas in Europe and North America.

Mark Q. Gardiner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada. He is the author of a number of articles on intersections between semantic theory and theories of religion (many co-authored with Steven Engler).

Armin W. Geertz is Professor in the History of Religions at the Department for the Study of Religion, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is co-founder of the Religion, Cognition and Culture Research Unit at Aarhus. His recent publications include Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture (edited, 2014) and Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture (2011, co-edited with Jeppe Sinding Jensen).

Rosalind I. J. Hackett is Professor and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. She has published extensively on religion in Africa, notably in the areas of New Religious Movements, art, gender, media, and conflict.

Olav Hammer is Professor of the Study of Religions at the University of Southern Denmark. Recent publications include Western Esotericism in Scandinavia (2016, co-edited with Henrik Bogdan) and Handbook of the Theosophical Current (2013, co-edited with Mikael Rothstein).

Manfred Hutter is Professor of Comparative Religions at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, Germany. His recent research focuses on pre- and non-Islamic religions of Iran and on the mythologies, rituals, and religious traditions of Ancient Anatolia in the second and early first millennium bce.

Adrian Ivakhiv is Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (USA). He is the author of Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature (2013).

Jeppe Sinding Jensen is Senior Lecturer in the Department for Culture and Society and a research associate at the Interacting Minds Centre, both at Aarhus University, Denmark. His most recent book is What is Religion? (2014).

Paul Christopher Johnson is Professor of History and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. His publications include Spirited Things: The Work of “Possession” in Afro-Atlantic Religions (edited, 2015).

Darlene M. Juschka teaches in Women’s and Gender Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Regina, Canada. She is the author of Political Bodies, Body Politic: The Semiotics of Gender (2009).

Pamela E. Klassen is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her publications include Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity (2011).

Constantin Klein is Assistant Professor at the Department of Theology, Bielefeld University, Germany. His research interests include the empirical assessment of religiousness and empirical research about contemporary religiousness and spirituality, in particular the relation between religiousness and attitudes, between religiousness and gender, and between religiousness and mental and physical health.

Anne Koch is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her research focuses on the aesthetics of religion, the economy of culture and religion, religion, health, and healing, and global yoga.

Volkhard Krech is Professor of Religionswissenschaft at Ruhr-University, Bochum, Germany. He is the Director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe.” His main research interests are related to the theory of religion and history of religions, religious pluralization and globalization, religion and violence, and history of the study of religion.

Oliver Krüger is Professor of Religious Studies at Fribourg University, Switzerland. He has published extensively on the sociology of religion and media, posthumanism, ritual studies, and research methods in the study of religion.

Lois Lee is a sociologist and research associate at the Institute of Advanced Studies UCL, UK. She is author of Recognizing the Non-Religious: Reimagining the Secular (2015), co-editor of Religious Pluralism: A Resource Book (2015) and Secularity and Non-religion (2013), and co-editor of the journal Secularism and Nonreligion.

Arvind Mandair is S.B.S.C. Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, USA. His publications include: Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2013); Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Translation (2009); and Secularism and Religion-Making (2011, co-edited with Markus Dressler).

Craig Martin is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, USA. His recent publications include Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie (2014) and A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (2012).

Philip A. Mellor is Professor of Religion and Social Theory at the University of Leeds, UK. His most recent book publication is The Sociology of the Sacred: Religion, Embodiment and Social Change (2014, with Chris Shilling).

Axel Michaels is Professor of Classical Indology, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany. His publications include Homo Ritualis: Hindu Ritual and Its Significance for Ritual Theory (2016); Exploring the Senses (2014, co-edited with Christoph Wulff); Emotions in Rituals in Performances (2012, co-edited with Christoph Wulff).

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, USA. He has published widely on religious material culture, most recently The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity (2015).

Alex Norman is a senior lecturer in higher education at the Graduate Research School, Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the author of Spiritual Tourism (2011).

Benjamin Grant Purzycki is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He examines religious cognition, its effects on human coordination and cooperation, and how religious systems co-evolve with social and ecological problems.

Jörg Rüpke is Permanent Fellow in Religionswissenschaft and Co-Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany. His publications in English include From Jupiter to Christ: On the History of Religion in the Roman Imperial Period (2014); Religion: Antiquity and its Legacy (2013); Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change (2012); and several co-edited books.

William S. Sax is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. He is Principal Investigator and co-leader of a number of research projects in the areas of Ethnography of India/Western Himalayas, Anthropology of Religion, and Medical Anthropology.

Benjamin Schonthal is Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His first book, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law, is forthcoming.

Peter Seele is trained in economics, philosophy, and protestant theology. He worked as Assistant Professor at the Center of Religion, Economy and Politics at the University of Basel, Switzerland and currently works as Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics at the Università della Svizzera in Lugano, Switzerland.

Hubert Seiwert is Professor Emeritus of Religionswissenschaft at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His work focuses on Chinese religions, New Religious Movements, and systematic-comparative perspectives on the study of religion.

John H. Shaver is Lecturer in Religion at the University of Otago. His research is concerned with understanding intracultural variation in ritual behavior, relations between religion and fertility, and the evolution of syncretic religions.

Chris Shilling is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, UK. His book publications include The Body: A Very Short Introduction (2016) and Sociology of the Sacred: Religion, Embodiment and Social Change (2014, co-authored with Philip Mellor).

Richard Sosis is James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology and Director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut, USA. His work has focused on the evolution of religion and cooperation, with particular interests in ritual, magic, religious cognition, and the dynamics of religious systems.

Michael Stausberg is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. His recent publications include Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations, and Encounters (2011) and, as co-editor, The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism (2015, with Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina), Defining Magic (2013, with Bernd-Christian Otto), and The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion (2011, with Steven Engler).

Heinz Streib is Professor for Religious Education at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, where he has established the Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion. His recent books in English include Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (2016, co-authored with Ralph W. Hood).

Paul-François Tremlett is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, UK. His publications include Lévi-Strauss on Religion: The Structuring Mind (2014) and Religion and the Discourse of Modernity (2011).

Thomas A. Tweed is the Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, USA. His most recent monograph is America’s Church: The National Shrine and the Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital (2011).

Asonzeh Ukah is a sociologist/historian of religion affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is Director of the Research Institute on Christianity and Society in Africa (RICSA), University of Cape Town, and Affiliated Senior Fellow of Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Hugh B. Urban is Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA. His most recent monograph is The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (2011).

Manuel A. Vásquez is Professor of Religion at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. He is the author of More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (2011) and Living “Illegal”: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration (2011, co-authored with Marie F. Marquardt, Timothy J. Steigenga, and Philip J. Williams).

Laura J. Vollmer is currently working on her PhD in the comparative study of religion at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She researches the historical and social construction of discourses of ‘religion’ relative to ‘science.’

Kocku von Stuckrad is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Recent publications include The Scientification of Religion (2014); Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion (2016, co-edited with Frans Wiijsen); The Vocabulary for the Study of Religion (2015, co-edited with Robert A. Segal).

Robert A. Yelle is Professor for the Theory and Method of Religious Studies and Chair of the Interfaculty Program in Religionswissenschaft at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Germany. His recent publications include Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History (2013); The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in India (2013); After Secular Law (2011, co-editor).

Lucas Zapf currently is postdoctoral fellow at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland. His research revolves around the influence of market economy on its agents and how religion is involved.