UK/BRIC - Practices and processes of religious diversity
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The research network primarily involves five key academic participants whose combined profile offers an experience of different cultures and parts of the world tailored to meeting the project’s aims and objectives. As such, the network is international in nature and comprises scholars living in and/or working on religion in each of the respective UK-BRIC contexts. The five key academic participants also comprise a mixture of established scholars and new researchers who employ a variety of thematic and disciplinary approaches relevant to the project at hand.

The project PI is Professor Andrew Dawson (Lancaster University) who contributes in respect of his experience of the UK and European contexts. The project Co-I is Professor Ruby Sain (Jadavpur University) whose life-experience and specialism pertains to the Indian subcontinent. Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Religion at King’s College London, Dr Marat Shterin contributes on the grounds of his extensive experience of religion in Russia, while Dr Cristina Maria de Castro (Federal University of Minas Gerais) contributes in view of her experience of and expertise on Brazil. Last, but not least, Dr Yunfeng Lu (Peking University) lives and researches religion in China. In addition to their expertise in particular national contexts, each project member has experience of academic engagement with issues and themes of immediate relevance to the network’s concerns with religious diversity.

Professor Andrew Dawson

Andrew Dawson is Professor of Modern Religion in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. Andrew received his doctorate from Oxford University and has degrees in social science and religious studies from US and other UK institutions. His research engages religious change against the backdrop of modern transnational processes and employs a multidisciplinary, multilingual and mixed-methods approach. Dissatisfaction with existing academic paradigms leads Andrew to articulate an understanding of religious change (i.e. ‘multifaceted modernity’) which combines sensitivity to local processes with due attention to overarching transnational dynamics.

Andrew’s most recent books include Santo Daime: A New World Religion (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Sociology of Religion (SCM Press, 2011). He has also written numerous articles and chapters, for example: ‘Religion, Globalization and Modernity: From Macro-Processes to Micro-Dynamics’ (Estudos de Religião, 28.2, 2014); ‘Religion and the Theoretical Implications of “Globalizing Modernity”’, (Civitas, 14.3, 2014); and Putting Baby Back in the Bath: Theorising Modernity for the Contemporary Sociology of Religion, (in A. McKinnon and M. Trzebiatowska eds, Sociological Theory and the Question of Religion. Ashgate, 2014).
 
In addition to leading this project, Andrew is a member of the Danish CARD-network (Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity).

Web page: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/about-us/people/andrew-dawson

Professor Ruby Sain

Ruby Sain is Head of the Department of Sociology and Coordinator of the ‘Centre for the Study of Religion and Society’ at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.

The Centre for the Study of Religion and Society aims to provide a nuanced study of the realities of the modern world in which religion is an important feature. It promotes the study of various aspects of religion in relation to society with the central purpose of encouraging scholars to explore deeper the more tolerant and universalizing features of religion both in the present and in the past as well as religion’s more challenging features. In resisting the spiral of societal hatred between groups of various religious orientations and exploring the multiple realities of ethnic, social and religious diversity, the centre promotes respect and cooperation through increased knowledge of what religions are and do, their principles and values as well as the living practices of their adherents.

Professor Sain has recently authored Folk Religion of Bengal (Forthcoming), co-edited The Sociology of Religion in India: Past, Present and Future (Abhijeet Publications, 2013) and written various articles and book chapters.

Web page: http://www.jaduniv.edu.in/view_department.php?deptid=152

Dr Cristina Maria de Castro

Cristina Maria de Castro is Professor of Sociology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. In 2005 and 2007 she acted as a visiting researcher at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden, Holland. In 2007, Dr Castro was selected though a highly competitive selection process to participate in a training programme for new PhD researchers in the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning, CEBRAP; one of the most renowned research institutions in Brazil.

Her research interests include the sociology of religion, religion and immigration in Brazil (focussing on Islam), the construction of religious identities, integration, religious transnationalization, and the social and religious roles of gender. Dr Castro has recently authored The Construction of Muslim Identities in Contemporary Brazil (Lexington Books, 2013) and is currently co-editing, with Andrew Dawson, Religion, Migration and Mobility: the Brazilian Experience (Routledge, 2016).

Web page: http://www.fafich.ufmg.br/possociologia/index.php?r=home

Dr Marat Shterin

Marat Shterin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Religion, King’s College London, and holds a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).  

His research interests include sociology of religion, religious change, new religious movements in global perspective, religion in Russia, in particular as shaping and shaped by changing individual life-worlds, radicalisation of religion, religion and identity.

Publications include Religion in the Remaking of Russia (2016, forthcoming); Demystifying the Caliphate: Historical Memory and Contemporary Contexts (with M. Al-Rasheed and C. Kersten, 2012); ‘Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism: the New Muslims Movement in Kabardino-Balkaria and Its Path to Violence’, Journal of Religion, State, and Society (with Akhmet Yarlykapov, 2011); ‘New Religions in Changing Russia: opportunities and challenges, in Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements (2012), and others.

Web page: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/people/staff/academic/shterin/index.aspx

Dr Yunfeng Lu

Yunfeng Lu is Associate Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Religion and Society at Peking University. His academic interest focuses on sociology of religion and social psychology and he is the author of The Transformation of Yiguan Dao in Taiwan: Adapting to a Changing Religious Economy (Lexington Books, 2008). Articles by Dr Lu have appeared in The Sociological Quarterly, Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sciences in China,and a number of Chinese-language journals. His current work focuses on the following four areas: the governance of religion in China; new religious movements in contemporary China; the role of religion in the public sphere; and, urbanization and religion.

Web page: http://www.sociology.pku.edu.cn/facultyinfo.jsp?name=lu%20yunfeng

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