Notes on Contributors
Kusha Anand
is working as a Research Associate at the UCL Institute of Education where she was awarded her PhD in Political Sociology of Education in 2019. Her thesis looked at how the history of India-Pakistan relations is enacted in schools in Delhi and Lahore. She has over a decade of fieldwork experience on several interdisciplinary projects liaising with policymakers, teachers, EdTech entrepreneurs, and NGO s in India.
Amin Al-Astewani
focuses on the role played by religious tribunals in Western legal systems. Over the past few years, he has led cutting-edge research on a novel type of religious tribunal in the UK, namely Islamic Shariah tribunals. After conducting fieldwork research at four of the most prominent of these tribunals, Dr Al-Astewani submitted written evidence to Parliament on the legal status of their decisions and practices, as part of the government’s first public review of Shariah councils in the UK. His evidence was subsequently cited by over twenty media outlets, including internationally. As part of his engagement with communal organisations and bodies, Dr Al-Astewani has also advised the UK Board of Shariah Councils on the legal status of Islamic Tribunals. He continues to offer his expertise and advice to both policy-makers and Shariah councils on the legal status and role of Islamic tribunals in the modern English legal system.
Amarina Ashar Ariyanto
is a lecturer in Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java. She holds a Ph.D degree from the School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia. She is interested in the topics of intergroup relations, group dynamics, and psychology of identity.
Ryan T. Cragun
is a professor of sociology at The University of Tampa. His research focuses on Mormonism and the nonreligious and has been published in various scholarly journals. He is also the author of several books.
Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
is Associate Professor and Research Group Lead for Faith and Peaceful Relations at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK. She is the elected Chair (2020–2023) of the Muslims in Britain Research Network (MBRN). As a feminist sociologist of religion, she explores inter-religious relations in Britain, women’s religion, digital religion and British Muslim studies. Her publications include Muslim Women in Britain: Demystifying the Muslimah (2012), Religion or Belief, Discrimination and Equality: Britain in Global Contexts (with Paul Weller, Kingsley Purdam and Nazila Ghanea, 2013), Islamic Education in Britain: New Pluralist Paradigms (with Alison Scott-Baumann, 2015), Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion (with Suha Shakkour, 2015), Islam on Campus: Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education (with Alison Scott-Baumann, Mathew Guest, Shuruq Naguib and Aisha Phoenix, 2020).
Novitasari R. Damanik
is a lecturer at the State University of Jakarta, Indonesia. She received her Master’s degree in Social Psychology from the Universitas Indonesia. She is interested in ideology, religion, and individuals’ decision-making as a function of their group membership. Her interests extend to the process of individual’s decision making to engage in terrorist behavior and the process of individual’s decision making to disengage from a terrorist group, including basic processes (e.g. personal experiences, group influence, and ideology). She worked as a research consultant in the area of terrorist rehabilitation at the Ministry of Social Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, and as a research assistant on the deradicalization program for terrorist detainees at the National Agency for Combating Terrorism of the Republic of Indonesia.
Abhijit Dasgupta
is a doctoral student of Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Al Dueck
is the Distinguished Senior Professor of Cultural Psychologies at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. In addition to teaching courses that focus on the dialogue between culture, psychology, and religion, he is engaged in research on the role of religion in therapy and conflict resolution between religious groups. He was the recipient (with Dr. Buxin Han) of a grant to support cultural psychology of religion research in China and to encourage intellectual exchange with American psychologists of religion. He is the author with Kevin Reimer of A Peaceable Psychology (2009) and most recently edited a volume on Indigenous Psychology of Spirituality, Springer Publishing (2021).
Johan Eriksson
is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at Umeå University in Sweden. Johan’s research examines the closing of two Muslim schools and the role ‘radical Muslim’-discourse has played in the decisions.
Maren Freudenberg
is interim professor of Religious Studies at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. She holds a PhD (Dr. phil.) in Sociology from Freie Universität Berlin. Her dissertation focused on transformations in contemporary Mainline Protestantism and analyzed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Currently, Freudenberg researches neo-charismatic and neo-Pentecostal Evangelicals in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland with special attention to the intersections of religion and popular culture. She works with qualitative methods, particularly elements of Grounded Theory. Her theoretical expertise includes theories of charisma and authority as well as religious economy approaches.
Mathew Guest
is Professor in the Sociology of Religion, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, in the United Kingdom, where he has taught since 2004. His research has covered various aspects of the Evangelical movement in the late modern world, including Anglo-American relationships, engagements with capitalism and the emerging church movement. He has also conducted over 10 years’ research into the status of religion within the social contexts of higher education. His publications include Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture (2007), Christianity and the University Experience (with Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner; 2013) and Islam on Campus: Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain (with Alison Scott-Baumann, Shuruq Naguib, Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and Aisha Phoenix; 2020).
Gagan Hartana Tupah Brama
is a lecturer in Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java. He is interested in the topics of psychometrics and psychological research methods.
Stephen Heap
is a Baptist minister who has worked in and around universities in various roles; as chaplain, governor, occasional lecturer, Professor of theology, and as the Church of England’s national higher education adviser. He currently chairs the national Free Churches Group Higher Education Working Group. He has lectured and written widely on higher education and chaplaincy and is the editor of The Universities We Need: Theological Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2017).
Ralph W. Hood
is professor of psychology, LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professorship of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and UT Alumni Association Distinguished Professor. Editor-in-Chief of the Brill series, Psychology and Religion. He is a past president of division 36 of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its’ William James award for research in the psychology of religion.
Joevarian Hudiyana
is a lecturer in Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java. He holds a doctoral degree in Psychology from Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia. He is interested in the topics of culture and psychology, cross-cultural psychology, beliefs and values, as well as extremism.
Thomas Kern
is Professor of Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg in Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 and completed his habilitation thesis in 2005. He conducted research projects in South Korea, the United States, and Germany. His major research interests are related to the fields of sociological theory, political sociology, sociology of religion, economic sociology and social network analysis. His current projects include a study about the emergence of religious markets in the United States. Another study deals with the recent transformation of social conflict structures in Germany under the influence of growing digitalization.
Tomas Lindgren
is a professor of the psychology of religion at the Department for Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. His major research interests include violence, nonviolence, religious conflicts, and the psychology of radicalization.
Josefa Loebell
is a PhD student at the Chair of Sociology and Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her area of expertise is sociological theory, cultural sociology, sociology of religion, quantitative text analysis, and social network analysis. In her doctoral thesis, Josefa explores the relationship of popular religion and digitalization. In addition, she works in a DFG-funded research project, which deals with the question “How do Religious Markets emerge?”
Nina Monowski
is a PhD Student at the Chair of Sociology and Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her research focuses on institutional complexity in consulting markets. She is also a researcher in a DFG-funded research project named “How do Religious Markets emerge?” Prior to that, she finished her master program at the University of Bamberg. Nina’s research interests include social network analysis, organizational sociology, cultural sociology, and sociology of religion.
Jenny Morgans
is an Anglican priest and a chaplain at King’s College London, and she has a doctorate in Feminist Practical Theology. Her research interests include Christianity, gender and chaplaincy at university, about which she is writing a book to be published with SCM Press. She is also an associate tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology, based in Kent. She lives in Brighton where she enjoys swimming in the sea.
Laraib Niaz
is a current doctoral candidate at the Institute of Education, University College London where her research focuses on the intersection of religion and education in Pakistan at the classroom level. She previously completed her Masters in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also a part of the teaching faculty at IOE, UCL, a member of the Working Group on Inclusive Education in Pakistan and has been a consultant on research projects funded by DFID and UN WFP.
Insa Pruisken
is Assistant Professor at the Chair of Sociology and Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg in Germany. PhD in Sociology at the University of Speyer in 2013. Recent articles focus on the emergence of megachurches and religious markets in the U.S. Currently she leads a research project funded by the German Research Foundation with the title “How do Religious Markets emerge?” Main research interests are in sociological theory, organizational sociology, social network analysis, sociology of religion and cultural sociology.
Martin Radermacher
is a scholar of comparative religion (Religionswissenschaft) at the Center for Religious Studies (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum). His research focuses on contemporary Christianities in Europe and North America in relation to space and bodies. His book Devotional Fitness: An Analysis of Contemporary Christian Dieting and Fitness Programs was published in 2017. He has published peer reviewed articles in, e.g., Material Religion, the Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, and the Journal of Religion in Europe.
Asgar Halim Rajput
is a visiting lecturer in Muslim chaplaincy; accredited mediator; a trustee of a multi-faith chaplaincy; director of the Association of Muslim chaplains in Education (AMCed); trainer; and consultant. Worked in chaplaincy and student support for 16 years in varies sectors.
Victoria Redclift
is an Associate Professor of Political Sociology at University College London, where she works on the Sociology of ‘race’, ethnicity and migration with a focus on citizenship and political exclusion. Her work pays particular attention to histories of displacement and the formation of diaspora, spatial formations of exclusion, and the negotiation of local and global ‘political space’. She is the author of Statelessness and citizenship: Camps and the creation of ‘political space’, which was shortlisted for the BSA Phillip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2014, as well as New racial landscapes: Contemporary Britain and the neoliberal conjuncture (with Malcolm James and Helen Kim). She worked at the LSE, the University of Manchester, and the University of Surrey before joining UCL in 2018.
Sebastian Schüler
is Professor for the Study of Religion at Leipzig University, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Münster with a dissertation on cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion (Cognitive Science of Religion). In his postdoctoral research, he investigated recent transformational processes (Emerging Church) in a contemporary prayer movement in different European countries in a qualitative study. He is also interested in issues of collective effervescence, embodiment, charisma, and social dynamics in the context of Evangelicalism and New Religious Movements. More recently, Schüler has worked on conceptual metaphors in the Human Potential Movement.
Dorothea Schulz
is a Professor of Social & Cultural Anthropology at the University of Münster, Germany. Her publications include the monographs “Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali” (James Currey, 2021), “Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God” (Indiana University Press, 2012), the co-edited volumes “Prayer in the City: The Making of Muslim Sacred Places and Urban Life” (Argument, 2012) and “Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa (Routledge, 2015), and numerous articles and book chapters on Islam in Mali.
Kundan Singh
is a former Core Faculty at Sofia University, Palo Alto and is currently the Vice President of the Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco. He has authored a book titled The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda book chapters in edited works for the discipline of Indian Psychology He has lectured extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area and has made several paper presentations at conferences in the United States and India.
Hannes Sonnenschein
is a Ph.D. candidate in psychology of religion at Umeå University in Sweden, where he received degrees in Religious Studies, Theology, and Psychology of Religion. His research interests include the narrative psychology of religion and violence. In particular, Hannes’ research examines processes of radicalization, identity, and engagement in (political) violence in the Jewish-Israeli sociocultural context.
Mohammad Soltani Renani
is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Isfahan in Iran. He studied Religious education in the seminary of Qom up to level 4 (equivalent to a Phd). He then completed an MA in Philosophy and Theology, submitting a thesis that focussed on the problem of evil from the perspective of Islamic theology. His subsequent Ph.D. Thesis was entitled “The Theological principles of exegesis the Qurʾan in the works of Sheikh Tusi.” His publications include twelve books in Islamic sciences, including on jurisprudence and interpretation of the Qurʾan and twenty research articles in Iranian academic journals in the field of interpretation of the Qurʾan and Islamic theology.
Louise Sundarajan
received her Ph.D. in History of Religions from Harvard University, and her Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology from Boston University. She is founder and chair of the Task Force on Indigenous Psychology, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and past president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association). She has published extensively on culture and emotions, and is the author of Understanding emotion in Chinese culture: Thinking through psychology
Nicole Lee-Thung Tan
is currently a clinical psychologist practicing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She is also a member of the Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology. Nicole obtained her B.A. (Hons) Psychology from UCSI University. Subsequently, she received her Master in Clinical Psychology from HELP University. With a strong interest in uncovering knowledge in the application of different therapeutic modalities in Malaysia, Nicole is currently enrolled in PhD program in Monash University Malaysia, Psychology Department.
Xiaoqi Tang
is a PhD candidate of Religious Studies at Lancaster University, with a bachelor’s degree of Law from China University of Political science and Law, a Master’ s degree of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong, and a Master’ s degree of Arts (Applied Buddhist Studies) at Nan Tien Institute of Higher Education in Australia.
Thomas Teo
is a professor of psychology in the Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology Program at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has been active in the advancement of theoretical, critical, and historical psychology throughout his professional career. His research has been meta-psychological to provide a more reflexive understanding of the foundations, trajectories, and possibilities of human subjectivity. His research program contributes to the psychological humanities.
Amanda tho Seeth
is currently 50% acting chair of Transregional Southeast Asian Studies at Humboldt-University Berlin as well as research fellow in the project “Freedom and Development? Religious Actors, Freedom of Belief and Religion, and Sustainable Development” (conducting the case studies on Indonesia and India) at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. She studied Political Science, Islamic Studies, and Indonesian Studies at the University of Hamburg and at State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. In 2020, she completed her doctoral thesis in Comparative Politics and International Development Studies at Philipps-University Marburg with an analysis of Islamic universities as actors in the democratization processes in Indonesia and Tunisia. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies (CASE) in Paris. Her research focuses on the national and international politics of Islamic education and Islamic academia in Indonesia, epistemologies and cosmopolitan thought in Indonesia, as well as the renegotiation of Indonesia’s position within the wider Muslim world as played out in the fields of education, knowledge, culture, heritage, and public diplomacy.
Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting
is a senior lecturer teaching at Department of Psychology, Monash University Malaysia campus. She holds both MA and PhD in clinical psychology from the Wheaton College and Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary at US. Later finished her post-doc training at University of Southern California, and holds an active license as psychologist in California since 2009. She has taught in higher education in US, China and Malaysia and pioneered in clinical training in Asia mental health. Her research leadership focuses on indigenous religion and psychology, suffering of the ethnic minorities, and cultural rationality. After joining Monash Malaysia, she has started Culture and Health Lab and securing multiple grants in cross-national studies and indigenous people study. She is also an active humanitarian worker in disaster zones since 2008, as the founder to two national psychosocial services voluntary platforms in China and Malaysia.
Min-Min Tan
is a research fellow at the Southeast Asia Community Observatory (SEACO), Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. She completed her PhD in Public Health from Monash University Malaysia and Master Of Public Health from the Adventist International Institute Of Advanced Studies. She was a postdoctoral research scientist at Cancer Research Malaysia and the University of Nottingham Malaysia where she developed breast cancer risk prediction models specifically for Asian population by incorporating genetic data with epidemiological and clinical risk factors. Currently her research focuses mainly on the psychosocial determinants of health.
Nicole Wagner
received her Master’s degree in Social & Cultural Anthropology, and the Study of Religion from the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her dissertation focuses on religious leaders’ authorisation process in the Kenyan context and their narratives regarding environmental change and social crisis. Her main research interests are Anthropology of Religion, Mission and Colonialism in East Africa, Anthropology of Youth and Childhood, Migration and Religious Pluralism in Switzerland, Medical Anthropology, and Gender Studies. Nicole Wagner is a lecturer and consultant for Diversity and Transculturality.
Paul Weller
has focused his scholarly work on religion or belief, discrimination, equality, human rights, and freedom. He led the first empirical study on the nature and extent of unfair treatment on the grounds of religion. Commissioned by the UK Government Home Office, its results were published as P. Weller, A. Feldman and K. Purdam et al. (2001). Religious Discrimination in England and Wales. Home Research Study. London: Home Office. A follow-up study funded by the Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social Research Councils resulted in P. Weller, K. Purdam, N. Ghanea, and S. Cheruvallil-Contractor. (2013). Religious Discrimination in England and Wales: Britain in Global Contexts. London: Bloomsbury. Weller has also worked how the heritage of the Baptist tradition of Christianity can contribute to these issues, especially as set out in P. Weller. (2005). Time for a Change: Reconfiguring Religion, State and Society. London: T. & T. Clark.
Chee-Khong Yap
completed both his Bachelor of Psychology and Master of Clinical Psychology at HELP University (Malaysia). He worked as a clinical psychologist at Singapore Healthcare Group Polyclinics (Singapore), as a Registered Psychologist in Singapore. He is also a full member of Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology and Singapore Psychological Society. Currently, he is working as a clinical psychologist and unit head at Sunway Medical Centre (Malaysia). Based on the biopsychosocial framework, he works with clients with mental health issues and chronic medical conditions. His research interests include mental health, chronic illnesses, and resilience.
YueYun Aw Yong
obtained her Psychological Science bachelor’s degree and honours in Monash University in 2020. She is currently working as a part-time research assistant in Monash Indigenous Psychology Lab. She is also a program coordinator in a Malaysia community mental health organization, where she oversees and manages the delivery of community-based mental health interventions in local urban poor communities, with a focus in trauma-informed care. She is also a strong believer in making mental healthcare more accessible to all communities, and is passionate about minimizing structural injustice.