Notes on Contributors
Zoe Alderton
is the Learning Experience Designer at Western Sydney University, The College and a Research Affiliate in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney. Her research explores the intersections of religion, aesthetics, and social identity, with a particular focus on new and marginalised religious movements, semi-religious organisations, and the atmospheres of place and space. Zoe is internationally recognised for her interdisciplinary work on how aesthetic patterns shape individual and group behaviours, and she has published widely on the cultural and sociological dimensions of belief. Her current projects examine the role of self-harmful behaviours in public life, as well as the affective dimensions of sacred and contested spaces.
Cato Christensen
of Sámi/Norwegian heritage, is an associate professor in Religious Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Christensen holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from 2013. His main research interests include indigenous religion(s), cultural memory, religious diversity, identity, and projectification. He has explored these topics primarily in the context of media representations, religious organisations, and professional practice.
George D. Chryssides
is an honorary research fellow at York St John University (UK), and was Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton from 2001 to 2008. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Glasgow, and obtained his doctorate at the University of Oxford. The majority of his publications have been on Christianity and new religious movements; his principal research interest is in Jehovah’s Witnesses. His most recent publications include Fieldwork in New Religious Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Jehovah’s Witnesses: A New Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2022). He was President of the International Society for the Study of New Religions from 2019 until 2022, and is a governor of Inform (Information Network on Religious Movements), based at King’s College, London.
Andrew Crome
is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He works on British religious history from the seventeenth century to the present, with a particular focus on the history of apocalypticism in an Anglo-American context. He also researches and writes on religion and contemporary popular culture. He is the author of The Restoration of the Jews (Springer, 2014) and Christian Zionism and English National Identity, 1600-1850 (Palgrave, 2018), and co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Millennialism and Apocalypticism with Tristan Sturm (Bloomsbury, 2025) and Religion and Doctor Who with James McGrath (Cascade, 2013).
Carole M. Cusack
is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. She trained as a medievalist; her doctorate was published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998). She now primarily researches contemporary religious trends and Western esotericism. Her books include (with Katharine Buljan) Anime, Religion and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (Equinox, 2015), Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010), and The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). She edited (with Alex Norman) Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (Brill, 2012) and (with Pavol Kosnáč) Fiction, Invention and Hyper-reality: From Popular Culture to Religion (Routledge, 2017). She edits the Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia (Daejin University, Korea).
Ethan Doyle White
is a visiting lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and teaches at City Lit, London. A scholar of religion and folklorist, he also has a disciplinary background in history and archaeology and possesses a Ph.D. in Medieval History and Archaeology from University College London. He is the author of books including Pale Hecate’s Offerings: Witchcraft in British Film and Television (Strange Attractor, 2026), The New Witches of the West: Tradition, Liberation, and Power (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Sussex Academic Press, 2016). He is also the co-editor of two academic volumes, has published over thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, and contributes to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In addition, he is lead director for interviews at the World Religions and Spirituality Project and sits on the editorial board of the American Academy of Religion’s “Reading Religion” website.
David Feltmate
is Professor of Sociology at Auburn University at Montgomery and editor of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. He is a sociologist of religion, popular culture, mass media, and humour and is the author of two books on religion and humour, Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy (NYUP 2017) and Religion and Humour: An Introduction (Routledge 2024).
Ioannis Gaitanidis
is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University. His research focuses on alternative therapies and contemporary religion in Japan. He has authored Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (2022, Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies) and co-edited Therapy, Spirituality, and East Asian Imaginaries (2025, Amsterdam University Press).
Eric Michael Mazur
is the Gloria & David Furman Professor of Judaic Studies, Professor of religious studies, and Robert Nusbaum Center Fellow in Religion, Law, and Politics at Virginia Wesleyan University. He has edited numerous works in religion and contemporary American culture, including God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2010 [2001]), Encyclopedia of Religion & Film (Gale, 2011), The Routledge Companion to Religion & Popular Culture (Routledge, 2015), Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Religion and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2022), and Religion and Outer Space (Routledge, 2023), and has authored chapters and encyclopedia entries on religion and comics, film, and television, as well as representations of Judaism in contemporary popular and material culture. He also writes on issues of religion and American law. He is currently developing a manuscript on the American political history of the yarmulke.
Elisha McIntyre
is an independent scholar living in Sydney, Australia. She earned her Ph.D. in Studies in Religion from the University of Sydney. Her research interests include religion and popular culture, religion and humor, New Religious Movements, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). She has researched and published on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for many years, with special emphasis on Mormon culture and Mormons in popular culture and media. Her book Religious Humor in Evangelical Christian and Mormon Culture (Bloomsbury, 2018) discusses Mormon humor, comedy and boundaries.
Elizabeth Olayiwola
is a senior lecturer in the Department of Broadcast, Film, and Multimedia at the University of Abuja, Nigeria and an Okwui Enwezor postdoctoral fellow at the African Institute, Global Studies, University of Sharjah, U.A.E. Her research primarily explores the growth and spread of Nigerian Christian film, with a particular focus on the intersections of media, gender, religion, and culture. She has distinguished herself as a scholar of the Nigerian screen, widely publishing on the unique culture of Nigerian Christian filmmaking. Her recent scholarship examines the role of Pentecostal infrastructures in shaping Nigeria’s cultural and creative industries, highlighting how religious networks, practices, and resources influence both film production and broader media economies.
Torjer A. Olsen
is a Sámi/Norwegian professor in Indigenous Studies at the Center for Sámi Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Olsen holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from 2008. His research interests include Indigenous education, gender and/in Indigenous communities, and popular culture representations of Indigenous communities.
Erik A.W. Östling
holds a Master of Arts (60 credits degree) in the History of Religions from Stockholm University, where he works as an Administrative Director of Studies at Stockholm Business School. Since 2020, he has been a member of the editorial team for the Nordic new religious movements studies journal Aura: Tidsskrift for Akademiske Studier av Nyreligiøsitet. His published works mainly focus on UFO religions and the wider cultural field of ufology. Previous publications include “‘The wrath of God on children of disobedience’: COVID19 in the theology and ideology of the Westboro Baptist Church” (2021), “‘I figured that in my dreams, I remembered what actually happened’: on abduction narratives as emergent folklore” (2021), and “Death and the afterlife in the Raëlian religion” (2017), co-authored with the late James R. Lewis.
Raymond Radford
gained his Ph.D. in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney with a thesis titled “What Will Become Of Us? The Great Replacement, History, Narrative, and Religion” (2024). His work covers a variety of topics relating to new religious movements, conspiracies, nostalgia, hauntology, and memory studies, and in particular how these combine to create new counter-narratives that become both competing and dominant narratives for marginalized communities. His publications include: “Somebody Up There Likes You: Free Will and Determinism on a Journey Through Space in Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan (1959)” (Implicit Religion: Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, 2018), “Isolation, Social Distancing, and the End Times: Reactions to a Twenty-First Century Pandemic” (International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 2022), and “Tradition, Memory, Place, and Identity: Examining Entanglement in Narrative and History” (Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, 2023).
Venetia Laura Delano Robertson
is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in Studies in Religion from the University of Sydney. She writes about the intersection of popular culture, new media, alternative spirituality, and gender theory. Her previous publications on this area include book chapters “Magical Matrimony: Romance and Enchantment in Harry Potter-themed Weddings” (McFarland 2019), “Animation as Salvation: From Fans to Believers” (Routledge 2017), and journal articles “Where Skin Meets Fin: The Mermaid as Myth, Monster and Other-Than-Human Identity” (Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 2013) and “Of Ponies and Men: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony Fandom” (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2014).
Bettina E. Schmidt
is Professor in the study of religions and anthropology of religion at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK, and Director of the Religious Experience Research Centre. Previously she taught at Oxford University and at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. She is a cultural anthropologist with extensive research experience in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Caribbean Diaspora. Her main research interests are religious experience, Latin American and Caribbean religions, anthropology of religion, identity, and wellbeing. Among her publications are Spirit and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experiences (Bloomsbury, 2016), Caribbean Diaspora in the USA: Diversity of Caribbean Religions in New York City (Ashgate, 2008), Handbook of Contemporary Brazilian Religions (co-edited with Steven Engler, Brill, 2017) and Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience and Health (co-edited with Jeff Leonardi, Equinox, 2020).
Mairead Shanahan
is a sociologist with particular interest in sociology of religion, social movements, and public health. Dr Shanahan’s Ph.D. was titled “Australian neo-Pentecostal churches: Incorporating late-modernity in a new religious form” (2018). Her publications include “Townsville Mums and Babies Program: An actualisation of Indigenous self-determination and women’s empowerment” (Outskirts 23:4, 2013), The Gympie Project: A community development initiative for addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sexual health needs in the Gympie region (Family Planning Queensland, 2014), “Marketing and Branding Practices in Australian Pentecostal Suburban Megachurches for Supporting International Growth” (in Cristina Rocha, Mark P. Hutchinson, and Kathleen Openshaw, eds, Australian Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Arguments from the Margins [Brill, 2020]). Dr Shanahan is currently a public health researcher for the Accident Compensation Scheme in New Zealand. She is based in Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Francisco Santos Silva
born in Lisbon in 1982, has a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Religions and Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, with a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from that same University. His Ph.D. thesis was on the translations of magical texts by Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers. He is a lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and recently obtained a second Ph.D. in Sociology at University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), on Islam in Portugal. He is currently teaching Philosophy and History to secondary school students in the Portuguese capital. His recent publications on the intersection between religion and popular culture include the chapter “Popular Music and Religious Syncretism” in the second edition of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Sofia Sjö
works as Research Manager at The Donner Institute for Research into Religion and Culture in Turku, Finland. Her research has engaged with religion and media, gender and religion, and young adults and religion, but her favourite area of research has always been religion and film. Sjö started off with exploring gender and messiah myths in science fiction films and then turned to films from her own Nordic setting. Her research on film and religion has been published in numerous journals and edited volumes, such as Journal of Religion and Film, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology. In her newest project Sjö has once again turned to Nordic films, exploring religious and secular imaginaries concerning death and dying.
Stefania Travagnin
is Reader in Chinese Buddhism at SOAS, University of London, where she also chairs the Centre of Buddhist Studies. Her research addresses Buddhism and Buddhists in the Chinese region (especially Sichuan and Taiwan) from the late Qing to the contemporary time. Travagnin is co-director of the multiyear project “Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan”, where she explores Han Buddhist local micro-histories, female communities, patterns of Sangha education, and the spatial ecology of religious sites. Travagnin is also recipient of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2024/25) for a project that analyzes the operations of the Taiwanese Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation in non-Asian and non-Buddhist areas. She has edited and co-edited several volumes, including Religion and Media in China: Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Routledge, 2016), and the three-volume publication Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions (De Gruyter, 2019–2020). She is also editor-in-chief of Review of Religion and Chinese Society.
Ulrike Wiethaus
Ph.D., is Professor Emerita in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University. She is the author, co-author, and co-editor of numerous books and articles in the history of Christian spirituality and American Indian Studies. Her most recent book-length publications are Make Yourself Useful, Child: Southeast Native Women Contemplate Community, Spirituality, and Justice, co-edited with Mary Ann Jacobs and Cherry Maynor Beasley (Chapel Hill: Carolina Wren/Blair Publishing, 2022); American Indian Women of Proud Nations, co-edited with Mary Ann Jacobs and Cherry Maynor Beasley (2nd edition, New York: Peter Lang, 2024); and American Moravians and their Neighbors, 1772–1822, co-edited with Grant McAllister (Leiden and New York: Brill, 2023). As the inaugural director, she has guided the creation of the Religion and Public Engagement Concentration in Religious Studies at Wake Forest University.
Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow
is an adjunct fellow at the University of Groningen, having served as an associate professor until August 2025; previously he was a Humboldt research fellow at TU Darmstadt. He is the author of What Art Does (Rowman & Littlefield 2023) and the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of the Philosophy of the City Journal. He holds a Ph.D. in art history and philosophy from the University of Sydney, and researches at the fertile delta connecting aesthetics, philosophy of design, philosophy of technology, and political philosophy.
Humairah Zainal
is a research fellow at Singapore General Hospital. She has published widely in the fields of gender and ethnicity and medical education, focusing on the impact of digital health on clinical practice. She is the author of The Primordial Modernity of Malay Nationality: Contemporary Identity in Malaysia and Singapore (Routledge, 2022). Humairah has presented her research at numerous international conferences, including in Washington D.C., Boston, and London. She has also developed and taught both introductory and advanced-level courses at Singapore’s public universities. In Singapore, she has been an active contributor to public discourse on topics such as youth leadership in community organisations, majority-minority relations, and women’s rights and empowerment. In 2022, she was recognised as one of the “Successful People in Singapore” by the British Publishing House Ltd.
Benjamin E. Zeller
is the Irvin L. & Fern D. Young Presidential Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College (Chicago, USA). He researches religious currents that are new or alternative, including new religions, the religious engagement with science, and the quasi-religious relationship people have with food. He is author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (NYU Press, 2014), Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America (NYU Press, 2010), editor of Handbook of UFO Religions (Brill, 2021) and co-editor of Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (Columbia University Press, 2014), The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Religion, Attire and Adornment in North America (Columbia University Press, 2023). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University. He is co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.