Kevin Glauber Ahern, PhD,
is a theological ethicist who focuses on the significance of Catholic institutional ministries and Christian social movements. He is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College where he directs the Peace Studies program. He is the author of Structures of Grace: Catholic Organizations Serving the Global Common Good (orbis, 2015) and several other books, including the award-winning Visions of Hope: Emerging Theologians and the Future of the Church (orbis, 2013), The Radical Bible (orbis, 2013), and Public Theology and the Global Common Good (orbis, 2016). Dr. Ahern also serves as the President of the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA-Pax Romana), a global movement of intellectuals and professionals committed to social transformation.
Andrea Althoff, PhD,
is a sociologist and currently a lecturer for the German Society of European Academies. In the past, her research was situated at University of Chicago Divinity School and Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Previous work and teaching positions include the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (bamf), DePaul University Chicago, and the Elite Academy of the German Armed Forces (Hamburg). Her research interests are the nexus between migration and religion from a transatlantic perspective (Latinos and Muslims), right-wing extremism and Christianity, and human rights. Althoff’s latest book, Divided by Faith and Ethnicity: Religious Pluralism and the Problem of Race in Guatemala, was published in 2014 (Walter de Gruyter). Dr. Althoff currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
Valérie Aubourg
is a French cultural anthropologist. She is a researcher in the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (gsrl, cnrs-ephe) and a lecturer at the Catholic University of Lyon. From 2005 to 2011, she lived in Réunion where she conducted research on the island’s Pentecostal movements. In 2011, she coordinated the book Religions populaires et nouveaux syncrétismes (Surya éditions). In 2014, she published Christianismes charismatiques à l’île de La Réunion (Karthala éditions). Currently, her research focuses on the evangelical influence in Catholicism and Catholic migrants in France. In 2016 (with Bernadette Angleraud and Olivier Chatelan), she published 50 ans de catholicisme à Lyon 1965-2015 : De Vatican ii à nos jours (Karthala éditions).
Tricia C. Bruce
Karel Dobbelaere
is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Antwerp (Belgium), where he taught general sociology, sociology of religion and methodology. He received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Soka University (Tokyo, Japan) and has been a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College (Oxford, GB), Kent State University (Ohio, usa), the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Nagoya, Japan), Sofia University (Tokyo), and the Institut de Recherche sur les Sociétés Contemporaines (cnrs, France). His main fields of interest are: secularization, religious and church involvement, pillarization, and religious and sectarian movements.
Alejandro Gabriel Emiliano Flores, M.Sc.,
is Master’s Degree Coordinator in Urban Pastoral at Catholic University Lumen Gentium in Mexico City. Flores is also a researcher and member of the Observatorio Intercontinental sobre la Religiosidad Popular [Intercontinental Observatory of Popular Religiosity], and among other articles has published “Pastorale Herausforderungen in Wohnanlagen” [“Pastoral Challenges in Condominium Complexes”], in Eckhotl M. & Silber S. (eds.) Glauben in Mega-Citys: Transformationsprozesse in lateinamerikanichen Groβstädten und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Pastoral [Belief within Megacities: Transformation Processes in Major Latin American Cities and Their Impact on Pastoral Work] (Grünewald, 2014).
Paul Gareau
is Métis and French-Canadian from the farming community of Bellevue near Batoche, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Native Studies and is a Research Fellow for the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research (rcmr) at the University of Alberta. As a Religious Studies scholar, his thesis and published works, written in English and French, critically
Ramiro Gómez-Arzápalo Dorantes, PhD,
is a Professor at Catholic University Lumen Gentium; and at Universidad Intercontinental is Director of the Master’s Program in Philosophy and Critical Culture, Academic Director of the Intersticios Journal and President of the Observatorio Intercontiental sobre la Religiosidad Popular. Dorantes is also a member of conacyt (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología [National Council for Science and Technology]), the Asociación nacional de diálogo filosófico sobre la fe y la ciencia [National Association of Philosophical Dialogue on Faith and Science], and the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre la Religiosidad [Interdisciplinary Study Group on Popular Religion].
Isabelle Jonveaux
studied sociology and economics in Paris and Trent (Italy). She is working at the University of Graz (Austria) and is affiliated with the Centre d’études en sciences sociales du religieux (CéSor, Paris). Her doctoral thesis dealt with the monastic economy in West Europe (Le monastère au travail, Bayard, 2011) and she is still researching different aspects of monastic life in Europe but also outside Europe (Africa, Latin America). Her main publications are about Internet and religion (Dieu en ligne, Bayard, 2013), contemporary monastic asceticism (Moines, corps et âme, Le Cerf, 2018), but also collective books about the sociology of monasticism (Jonveaux, Pace and Palmisano, Sociology and monasticism, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion—Brill, 2014/Jonveaux and Palmisano, Monasticism in Modern Times, Routledge—2016). E-mail:
Jean-François Laniel
is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology, and an affiliate of the Center for European Studies/Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2018). His research focuses on the dynamics between tradition and modernity;
Solange Lefebvre
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Full Professor at the Institute of Religious Studies, University of Montréal, where she holds the Research Chair in Management of Cultural and Religious Diversity. Her areas of interest include religion in the public sphere, religion and politics, laïcité and secularization, youth and generations. Lefebvre’s recent publications include Cultures et spiritualités des jeunes [Youth Cultures and Spirituality] (Bellarmin, 2008); and the following volumes (as editor): Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity: Analysis, Reception and Challenges (Routledge, 2017); Catholicisme et cultures. Regards croisés Québec-France [Catholicism and Cultures. Québec-France Crossed Views] (Presses de l’Université Laval and Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015); Religion in the Public Sphere: Canadian Case Studies (University of Toronto Press, 2014); and Living with Diversity (International Journal of Theology. Concilium 2014/1). She has directed and collaborated on several funded research project and is regularly consulted on religious matters by governments and the media, as well as public and private organizations. She coordinates the Canadian section for the European database EUREL.com and offers her own database pluri that puts hundreds of documents on the management of cultural and religious pluralism at the disposal of the public (http://pluri.gdcr.umontreal.ca).
Andrew P. Lynch
holds an MA (Hons) from the University of Auckland, and a PhD from the University of Sydney, both in sociology. He currently teaches sociology at the University of Sydney and at the Australian Catholic University. He researches in the area of the sociology of religion and specializes in the study of contemporary Catholicism, with a focus on the Catholic Church as a global religious institution and its activities in local settings. His PhD thesis examined the Catholic Church and social change in the 1960s with an emphasis on Vatican
Sławomir Mandes, PhD,
is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. He has worked as participant or coordinator of many national and international research projects concerning social policy and religion. Currently, Mandes is engaged in the newest edition of the European Values Study. He has authored many reports and articles (and book publications as author or editor) directly related to problems of religion and the relationship of religion with other spheres of social systems: national and personal identity, cultural diversity and the public sphere.
Graham P. McDonough
is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Beyond Obedience and Abandonment: Toward a Theory of Dissent in Catholic Education (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), and co-editor (with Nadeem Memon and Avi Mintz) of Discipline, Devotion, and Dissent: Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic Schooling in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).
Alfonso Pérez-Agote
is an emeritus professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is coordinator of the European Group of Interdisciplinary Research on Religious Change, honorary president of the ceic (Centro de Estudios sobre la Identidad Colectiva—University of the Basque Country), as well as a member of cadis (Centre d’analyse et d’intervention sociologiques—EHESS-Paris), gsrl (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités—EPHE-Paris), “Plateforme violence et sortie de la violence” of Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH-Paris), and ipev (International Panel on Exiting Violence—FMSH-Carnegie Corporation of New York). His research and publications deal with collective identities, nationalism, religious change and secularization, cultural and religious pluralism, and new forms of social and political mobilization.
Wojciech Sadłoń, PhD,
is a sociologist and theologian. He is the Director of the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics in Poland, member of the Scientific Council of the Polish Central Statistical Office, and editorial board member of the journal Pedagogia Christiana. He has served on the editorial board of the International Catholic Review Communio. Sadłoń has been a lecturer in sociology at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He collaborates with Pew Research Center and the Center for Applied Research in Apostolate of Georgetown University. During the last 10 years, he has participated in over 20 research projects, recently as an expert in: “Third Sector Impact” (FP7), “Swiss Metadatabase of Religious Affiliation in Europe”, and research on World Youth Day in Poland. His publications in Polish, English, and German deal with civil society, social capital, and religious education. His publications include, Religijny capital spoleczny [Religious Social Capital] (Wydawnictwo Bezkresy Wiedzy, 2014) and an article on religious polarization in Poland; he has also edited a book on religious freedom. He is currently researching the religiosity of Polish migrants in Ireland, and studying religion from the perspective of critical realism and relational sociology.
Jesús Antonio Serrano Sánchez
holds a PhD in Public Administration and is Professor of Urban Pastoral at Catholic University Lumen Gentium in Mexico City. Serrano is a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Observatorio Intercontiental sobre la Religiosidad Popular. He is the author of several works including Planeación estratégica para la pastoral [Strategic Pastoral Planning] (San Pablo, Mexico, 2013).E-mail:
Barbora Spalová
studied ethnology and social anthropology in Prague. She is a member of the Institute of Sociological Studies at Charles University in Prague, and conducts
Jakob Egeris Thorsen
is an associate professor at the Department of Theology at Aarhus University (Denmark). He studied theology and social anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and received his PhD from the Aarhus University in 2012. He has published various articles and anthology chapters on Christianity in Latin America, World Catholicism and systematic theology. His book “Charismatic Practice and Catholic Parish Life – the Incipient Pentecostalization of the Church in Guatemala and Latin America” was published by Brill in 2015.
Helena Vilaça
holds a PhD in Sociology from of the University do Porto (UP), where she is Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology. She is a member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion, and her scientific work has been particularly focused on religious ethnicity and ethical pluralism; migrations, ethnicities, and religion; Portuguese Catholicism; and Protestant and evangelical communities. Vilaça has been part of the eurel network, the gericr network and several projects related to religion. Her publications include: “Portrait du Catholicisme au Portugal” (co-authored with Maria João Oliveira in A. Pérez-Agote, (ed.) Portraits du catholicisme : une comparaison européenne (Presses universitaires de Renne, 2012); and The Changing Soul of Europe: Religions and Migrations in Northern and Southern Europe (Ed. with E. Pace, I. Furseth, and P. Pettersson—Routledge, 2014).
Liliane Voyé
is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), where she taught general sociology, urban sociology, and sociology of religion. She received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Université Laval (Québec, Canada). She has been visiting professor at the universities of Geneva (Switzerland), Toulouse (France), Leuven (Belgium), Lisboa and Evora (Portugal). Her main fields of interest are: urbanism and architecture, social movements, and Catholicism.