Notes on Contributors
Piermarco Aroldi
PhD, is Full Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the School of Education of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (Italy), where he coordinates the Master Program in Digital Learning and Media Education. He is Head of OssCom, Research Centre on Media and Communication. His scientific interests lie in audience studies and media experience, especially television and online, the relationship between digital media and children/the elders, media and generations, and mediatization and social construction of reality through media representations. Among his recent publications: “Balancing Cultural and Economic Value: The Italian Way to Children’s Television (1954–2021)” (in Histories of Children’s Television Around the World, edited by Y. Gozansky, Peter Lang 2023) and “La copertura informativa degli abusi sessuali nella Chiesa cattolica. Un’analisi di tre testate giornalistiche italiane (2018–2022)” (with G. Giordan and S. Sbalchiero, Problemi dell’informazione 2024).
Céline Béraud
PhD, is Professor of Sociology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris) and a member of CéSor (Centre d’études en sciences sociales des religions). Her main current research topics include gender and sexual issues within Catholicism, as well as religion in public institutions. She was recently appointed to chair the research commission investigating sexual violence committed by Abbé Pierre, a well-known French priest and social activist. She has published Une religion parmi d’autres. Le catholicisme en prison et à l’hôpital (PUF 2025), Le catholicisme français à l’épreuve des scandales sexuels (Seuil 2021), and La bataille du genre. Du mariage pour tous à la PMA (Fayard 2021).
Brian Conway
is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. His research interest is the sociology of religion, especially Catholicism. He is co-editor of Religion, Law, and COVID-19 in Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Helsinki University Press 2024) and author of Sacred Callings: An Eventful Analysis of the Global Catholic Priesthood (Helsinki University Press 2025).
Sabrina Di Matteo
is a PhD student in Religious Sciences at Université Laval in Québec. Her research focuses on the journeys of Millennials in the Catholic Church in Québec and the impact of recent crises on their affiliation. She previously worked for the Canadian Religious Conference and has taught classes and workshops about the sex abuse crisis and the history of the Catholic Church and residential schools in Canada. She recently authored “The Case of Québec and Bill 21 in the Landscape of Polarization” (Consensus 2024).
Clémence Douteau
is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and a Teaching Assistant at the University of Rouen, France. Her research interests include gender and queer studies, the sociology of mobilisations, and the study of contemporary Catholicism.
Massimo Faggioli
is Professor in Ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin. Among his recent publications: The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis. Moving Toward Global Catholicity (Orbis Books 2020), Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Bayard 2021), The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II (co-edited with Catherine Clifford, Oxford University Press 2023), Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis (Orbis Books 2024), and Da Dio a Trump. Crisi cattolica e politica americana (Scholé 2025). He is co-author of Global Catholicism: Between Disruption and Encounter (Brill 2024) with Bryan Froehle, with whom he co-founded and co-edits the series “Studies in Global Catholicism” for Brill Publishers https://brill.edhh.ma/display/serial/SGC.
Julia Feder
PhD, is a Catholic systematic theologian. She is the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality and Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. She is the author of Incarnating Grace: A Theology of Healing from Sexual Trauma (Fordham University Press 2024).
Heather Fryer
PhD, is an independent scholar who served on the faculty of the History Department at Creighton University from 2004–2021. Her publications on the social history of the American West include Perimeters of Democracy: Inverse Utopias at the Wartime Social Landscape in the American West (University of Nebraska Press 2010) and the documentary film Shinmachi: Stronger Than a Tsunami (American Public Television, airing on PBS from 2019–2024). She is past editor of Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research.
Nikolina Hazdovac Bajić
is Assistant Professor at the University of Dubrovnik, Faculty of Economics and Business. Her academic interests include religion in post-socialist society, the relationship between religion and the state, non-religiosity and atheism, and marginalized people and communities. Her recent publications include “Religion and COVID-19 in Croatia: Preference for Religion and Variants of (Non)Compliance” (with S. Zrinščak in Religion, Law, and COVID-19 in Europe: A Comparative Analysis, edited by B. Conway, L. Kühle, F. Alicino, Helsinki University Press 2024) and “Floating Homes: Domestic Practices among Seafarers as Strategies against Isolation” (Traditiones 2024), and “Croatia” (with D. Marinović Jerolimov, in East Asian Religiosities in the European Union, edited by L. Pokorny, U. Dessì, and L. Cox, Brill 2024).
Massimo Introvigne
worked as Professor of Sociology of Religion at the Pontifical Salesian University in Torino, Italy, until his retirement in 2016. He served in 2011 as the Representative of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) for combating racism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance, and from 2012 to 2015 as President of the Observatory of Religious Liberty at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is the author of more than seventy books on sociology of religion and religious liberty, including The Plymouth Brethren (Oxford University Press 2018), Inside the Church of Almighty God (Oxford University Press 2020), and Brainwashing: Reality or Myth? (Cambridge University Press 2022).
Stefan Gärtner
Dr. habil., is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology, Head of Department Religion and Practice, Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research interests focus on spiritual and pastoral care and counseling and Catholicism in the Netherlands and Germany. Among his most recent publications: “Communicating in Chaplaincy. Fundamentals and Case Studies” (Practical Theology 2024) and “Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the Netherlands. Alternative Timeframe and Resonance” (Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 2025).
Giuseppe Giordan
PhD, is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology at the University of Padova. He coordinates the International Joint PhD in Religion, Culture and Public Life and his research interests include spirituality, religious pluralism, conversion, interfaith dialogue, Eastern Orthodoxy, and religious freedom. He has recently co-authored A Sociology of Religious Freedom (with O. Breskaya and J.T. Richardson, Oxford University Press 2024) and Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity (with A. Possamai, Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and co-edited the volumes Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches (with O. Breskaya and R. Finke, Brill 2021), Chinese Religions Going Global (with N. Cao and F. Yang, Brill 2020), and Interreligious Dialogue: From Religion to Geopolitics (with A.P. Lynch, Brill 2019).
Marco Guglielmi
is Assistant Professor at the University of Padova, Italy. He has specialized in the sociology of religion within an international PhD programme conducted jointly by the University of Padova, Western Sydney University, and other European universities. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Religious of Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, Italy, as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki. His main research interests include sociological topics such as religious diversity and migration, religion and human rights, and interreligious dialogue, with a particular focus on Orthodox Christianity and Italian Catholicism. His latest publications include the book The Romanian Orthodox Diaspora in Italy: Eastern Orthodoxy in a Western European Country (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).
Dinka Marinović Jerolimov
is emerita at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Her academic and research interests include traditional church religiosity, New Religious Movements, religious education, non-religiosity and atheism and youth religiosity. Her recent publications include: “Freethought, Atheism and Secularization in Croatia” (with N. Hazdovac Bajić and B. Ančić, in Freethought, Atheism and Secularization, edited by T. Bubik, A. Remmel, and D. Václavík, Routledge 2020), “Church and Welfare State in Croatia” (with N. Hazdovac Bajić, in Faith-Based Organizations and Social Welfare, edited by M. Glatzer, and P.C. Manuel, Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and “Croatia” (with N. Hazdovac Bajić, in East Asian Religiosities in the European Union, edited by L. Pokorny, U. Dessì, and L. Cox, Brill 2024).
Julia Martínez-Ariño
is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion and Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include the governance of religious diversity, the production of Jewish heritage and the study of nonreligion, in particular apostasy or institutional disaffiliation from the Catholic Church in Catholic-majority countries like Argentina and Spain. She is the author of Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe (Routledge 2021) and co-editor of several volumes, including Interreligious Encounters in Europe: Sites, Materialities and Practices (Routledge 2023) and Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces (Bloomsbury 2021). Her research has been published in Religion, State and Society, Secular Studies and Space and Culture, among other journals.
E.-Martin Meunier
is Full Professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies of the University of Ottawa. He is the holder of the Chair “Québec, Francophonie canadienne et mutations culturelles.” His research concerns sociology of religions, in particular sociology of contemporary Catholicism in Quebec and Canada. Author of more than 75 scientific contributions in various journals and collectives, he published with Jean-Paul Willaime, La guerre des dieux n’aura pas lieu. Entretiens de Jean-Paul Willaime avec E.-Martin Meunier (Labor et Fides 2019). He co-directs (with M.-C. Thifault) the Collection 21st – Society, History and Cultures at the University of Ottawa Press. Since 2016, he has been a Foreign Associate Member of the Groupe Société Religions et Laïcité (EPHE/CNRS, Paris). He is a Member of the Scientific committees of the journals Archives des sciences sociales des religions, Sociologies, Studies in Religion | Sciences Religieuses and Recherches sociographiques.
Rebecca K. Murray
PhD, is Professor of Criminal Justice and an associate dean at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Her works include effects of urban structures on crime, wrongful convictions and victim advocacy, and she has published works in journals such as Criminal Justice Review, Contemporary Justice Review and Crime and Delinquency. She founded the Nebraska Victim Assistance Academy through a USA Federal Grant awarded from the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime.
Michal Opatrný
is Associate Professor of Social Work, Pastoral Theology and Caritas Studies at the University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice (Czechia). Since 2024, he has been serving as the dean of the Faculty of Theology. In 2019, he received a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. His projects and publications focus on the border between theology and social sciences. Among his recent publications “Postsecular, Christian, or Humanistic Spirituality in Social Work within Secular Europe” (Journal of Religion and Health 2024) and “Iron Curtain of Fear: Theological Interpretations of Data About Attitudes of Christians Towards Refugees from Surveys in Central Europe” (with P.M. Zulehner and J. Žuffa, Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 2023).
Philippe Portier
is Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and Professor at Sciences Po Paris. After serving as Director of the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités laboratory at the CNRS and First Vice-President of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, he is now Director of the Observatoire International du Religieux with Alain Dieckhoff. He is currently working on the theory of secularism, the comparative analysis of secular regimes and the sociology of non-religion. He directed the archival investigation of the French Commission (known as the Sauvé Commission) into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He is the author of numerous articles and books. His most recent works include Métamorphoses catholiques. Acteurs, enjeux et mobilisations autour du mariage pour tous (with C. Béraud, Editions de la MSH 2015), L’État et les religions en France. Une sociologie historique de la laïcité (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2016), Politique et religion, L’enjeu mondial (dir. with A. Dieckhoff, Presses de Sciences Po 2017), Christianisme et modernité européenne (with J.-P. Willaime, Fondation pour l’innovation politique 2018), Cent ans de construction sociale. Une histoire de la Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (Flammarion 2019), La religion en France. Entre sécularisation et recomposition (with J.-P. Willaime, Armand Colin 2021), Religion and secularism in contemporary France (ed. with J.-P. Willaime, Routledge 2022), and Éduquer à la sexualité. Religions, laïcité, sexualités (ed. with A.-C. Bégot, ESF sciences humaines 2024).
Magdalena Ratajczak
is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Wroclaw, Poland, where since September 2024 she holds the position of Dean (2020–2024 Vice-Dean for International Relation). She is a chair of the Section of International Communication in the Institute of International and Security Studies at the Faculty of Social Science. She is also a coordinator of the Double Degree Programme with Padua University and Bochum University in the Institute of International and Security Studies. Her research interests focus on transcultural communication, diaspora and ethnic media in Europe, studies in cultural pluralism in European media, diaspora diplomacy, refugees and human rights. She is also dealing with Swiss multiculturality and the Swiss media system. She is a member of the International Editorial Board Peace, Human Rights, Governance Journal (University of Padua) and coordinator and member of the Research Team Helvetic Initiative. Among her recent publications “Humanitarian Diplomacy: The Case of Switzerland and Sweden” (with N. Broś, Politeja 2023) and “Visegrad Group Countries towards Migration” (with M. Ryniejska-Kiełdanowicz, in Humanitarian Aid and Empowerment of Ukrainian Refugees, edited by D. Moroń, M. Madej, and J. Csoba, Routledge 2024).
Stefano Sbalchiero
PhD in Sociology, is Senior Researcher and Assistant Professor (RtdB) at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), University of Padova. His research activity and academic teaching are focused on social research methods with special emphasis on quantitative analysis, topic modelling and text mining approaches. His research interests include intercultural and communicative processes, religion and spirituality, methodology and epistemology of social research, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and statistical analysis of textual data. He recently published Youth, Spirituality, Religion, and the Categories in Between (with G. Giordan, Religions 2024), and “The Enchantment of Science: Aesthetics and Spirituality in Scientific Work” (with B. Nicoli and B. Vaidyanathan, Sociology of Religion 2024).
Siniša Zrinščak
is Professor and Head of the Chair of Sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. His main scientific interests include religious and social policy changes in postcommunism, state-church relations, and religion and human rights. He recently coedited and co-authored books and monographs: Global Eastern Orthodoxy. Politics, Religion, and Human Rights (Springer 2020), Well-Being and Extended Working Life. A Gender Perspective (Routledge 2022), Religious Freedom. Thinking Sociologically (Routledge 2024), Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion (Brill 2024), Protestants in Croatia. Structure, Focus and Vitality (2025, in Croatian language), and journals’ special issues: Social Compass (2021), Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik (2022), Religion, State, and Society (2022), and Sociology Compass (2023).