Notes on Contributors

Zaheeda P. Alibhai

is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies with a specialization in Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research investigates the critical intersections between religion, law, politics, media, human rights, science, and ethics in the study of identity, multiculturalism, and pluralism in Canadian and international contexts. She is the recipient of the Leading Women Building Communities Award from the Canadian Minister of the Status of Women. She has contributed to several volumes exploring the intersection between religion, public policy and pluralism. Her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (sshrc).

Chrysa K. Almpani

graduate of the Department of International and European Studies (UoM), is currently a PhD Candidate in Sociology of Religion, Department of Ethics and Sociology, School of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds two MSc degrees in the fields of ‘Economic and Regional Development’ (Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences, auth) and ‘Sociology of Religion’ (see above). Her doctoral thesis, Religion and International Relations in Second Modernity: Power, moral cosmopolitanism and the responsibility to protect, has been awarded with a scholarship from the Hellenic Foundation of Research & Innovation (hfri). She has been Research Associate at the Social Research Centre for Religion and Culture since 2017, while she previously worked as an asylum caseworker in the Hellenic Ministry of Migration Policy during the EU’s Relocation Programme (2016–2017). She is also co-author of “Ateni-zo: A Non-formal Educational Guide on Human Trafficking” (Athens: Human Rights Defense Centre—kepad, 2014).

Olga Breskaya

is a postdoctorate researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova. She got her doctorate from the International Joint Ph.D. Programme “Human Rights, Society, and Multi-level Governance” at the University of Padova. Her research interest is focused on sociology of human rights and quantitative study of religious freedom. She serves as Board member of the International Sociological Association (Research Committee 22 Sociology of Religion, representative for Europe) from 2018 till 2022. Among her publications is Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion together with G. Giordan and J.T. Richardson 57 (3), 2018.

Anindita Chakrabarti

is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, iit Kanpur. Her research and teaching interests lie in the fields of sociology of religion, sociology of law (with a focus on personal law), economic sociology and urban sociology. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting fellow at csss (jnu), and at the Department of Sociology, Delhi University. In 2010 she won the Professor M. N. Srinivas Memorial Prize awarded by the Indian Sociological Society. Her monograph titled Faith and Social Movements: Religious Reform in Contemporary India (Cambridge University Press) was published in 2018 and co-edited volume titled Religion and Secularities: Reconfiguring Islam in Contemporary India (Orient Blackswan) in 2020. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies (hcas) at Leipzig University (2016–20).

Lukáš Dirga

is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and chief research coordinator at the Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic. He concentrates on ethnographic research within the field of penitentiary sociology (sociology of prison life).

Roger Finke

is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Religious Studies, and International Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University and is the Founder of the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.theARDA.com). He has authored two award-winning books with Rodney Stark. His most recent books include The Price of Freedom Denied with Brian Grim (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America’s Religious Landscape with Christopher P. Scheitle (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Faithful Measures: The Art and Science of Measuring Religion with Christopher Bader (New York University Press, 2017)

Giuseppe Giordan

is Professor of Sociology at the University of Padova. He is Coordinator of the International Joint PhD programme on Human Rights, Society and Multi- level Governance, and Co- editor of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion (Brill). His sociological research focuses on spirituality, conversion, religious and cultural pluralism, and religious freedom. He recently edited volumes Global Eastern Orthodoxy. Politics, Religion, and Human Rights with Siniša Zrinščak (Springer, 2020) and Chinese Religions Going Global with Nanlai Cao and Fenggang Yang (Brill, 2021).

Kerby Goff

is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and a research assistant with the Association of Religion Data Archive. His research focuses on religion, culture, and women’s social movement organizations.

Anna Grasso

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Studies of Aix-en-Provence (Sciences Po Aix). She holds a PhD in Political Science (2018) on the topic of politicization and trade unionism of Imams in contemporary Tunisia. Her research is mainly focused on religion and public policy, religious authority, as well as religion and political mobilisation in both France and Tunisia. She is currently codirecting a research project on the place of women in the mosque in France with regards to the issue of gender equality and inclusivity.

Nuran Erol Işık

is currently Professor of Sociology at Izmir University of Economics, İzmir (Turkey). Her publications cover themes and issues at the intersection of culture, media, and politics. In 1993, she completed her Ph.D. thesis on discourses in the New York Times at Michigan State University, Department of Sociology, and since then, has published on narratives of popular religion, rhetorical and discursive strategies of the media. She also participated in ethnographic field study projects in different regions of Turkey. Her most recent interests focus on narrative identity, storytelling practices in Turkish tv series, and the New Age culture in Turkish society.

Dane R. Mataic

is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Community Development at North Dakota State University. He is a senior research associate for the Association of Religion Data Archive and research associate for the Religion and State Project. His research focuses on the intersection of mobilization, international conflict, and social inequalities. Broadly, he applies organizational and community theories to address topics such as the spread of governmental policies that regulate religious organizations, the mobilization of religious members by American congregations, and the spread of religious bias and advocacy.

Efe Peker

is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Ottawa. He holds a joint-PhD in Sociology (Simon Fraser University) and in History (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). He completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017–19) in Sociology at McGill University, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His research focuses on state-religion relations, secularity, and nationalist-populist politics in comparative-historical perspective, including North America, Europe, and Asia (with particular attention to Québec, France, Turkey, and India). His recent works were featured in Social Policy & Society, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Social Science History.

Alexandros Sakellariou

is teaching sociology at the Hellenic Open University since 2016 and is a senior researcher at Panteion University of Athens working in large-scale EU and national projects since 2011. He earned his PhD on Sociology of Religion from the Department of Sociology of Panteion University. His scientific interests include, among others, sociology of religion, sociology of youth, politics and religion, religious communities in Greek society, youth activism and civic participation, right-wing extremism, radicalisation, and qualitative research methods. He is a board member of the Hellenic League for Human Rights.

Guillaume Silhol

is an associate researcher in political sociology from the University of Aix-Marseille and Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence in France (Department of Political Science, cherpa-mesopolhis, umr 7064). His research interests include the sociology of religion in the public sphere, the sociology of public policies and the historical sociology of the State in Southern Europe.

Jan Váně

is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Sociology, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. He concentrates on comparative research in the field of sociology of religion (individualization, religious cultural memory, transformation of religious communities); and problems of homelessness and social services provided to socially disadvantaged groups.

Barbara R. Walters

is Professor Emerita of Sociology, City University of New York, currently teaching the first Senior Seminar on cedaw and the Rights of Women at cuny Queens College. She completed the B.A. at Vanderbilt University and the Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1978, where she was a nimh Methodology Trainee and later a nimh Post-Doctoral Fellow in Psychiatry. She is the author of The Politics of Aesthetic Judgment, The Feast of Corpus Christi, Hiring the Best, and numerous comparative historical articles that examine religion, liturgy, church-state politics, and the status of women.