Collaborators

Amélie Barras is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science (Law & Society Program) at York University. She conducts research on the intersection between law, religion and politics. She has published on the politics of secularism in Turkey and France, including Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey: The Case of the Headscarf Ban (Routledge, 2014).  She also writes on reasonable accommodation and Islam in Canada. She has written a book with Jennifer Selby (Memorial University) and Lori Beaman (University of Ottawa) entitled: Beyond Accommodation. Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians (UBC Press, 2018). In 2022, with Jennifer Selby and Melanie Adrian (Carleton University), she co-edited Producing Islam (s) in Canada. On Knowledge, Positionality and Politics (University of Toronto Press). Finally, she is currently finishing a monograph, where she documents the ways in which NGOs that identify as Christian participate to human rights crafting at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Dr. Bessma Momani is Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and  Senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI). She was a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at both the Brookings Institution and Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, and formerly a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Mortara Center. She was a 2015 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and now sits on its board of directors. She is also a Fulbright Scholar.

She has authored and co-edited ten books and over 80 scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters that have examined international affairs, diversity and inclusion, Middle East affairs, and the global economy.  She is recipient of a number of research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), International Development Research Council, and the Department of National Defence. Dr. Momani is a regular contributor to national and international media on the global security and economic policy issues. She has written editorials for the New York Times, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Newsweek, and Time Magazine.

Brian Clarke (PhD Chicago) is an Adjunct member of faculty at Emmanuel College in Victoria University, the Toronto School of Theology.

His areas of research include religion and ethnicity, religion and public life, and contemporary patterns of disengagement from organized religion.

He is a contributor to A Concise History of Christianity in Canada (Oxford University Press), the author of Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto (McGill-Queen’s University Press), and co-author with Stuart Macdonald of Leaving Christianity: Changing Allegiances in Canada since 1945 (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

Jennifer A. Selby is associate professor of Religious Studies and affiliate member of Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Her research considers Islam in contemporary France and Canada, focusing on secularization theory, Muslim studies, gender and religion. She is the author of over 25 articles and book chapters, author of Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), co-author of Beyond Accommodation: Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians (UBC Press, 2018) and co-editor of Debating Sharia (with A. Korteweg, University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Joel Thiessen, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Flourishing Congregations Institute at Ambrose University, in Calgary, Alberta.

His research interests include religion in Canada, religious nones, Christian congregations, and millennials.

He is the author of The Meaning of Sunday: The Practice of Belief in a Secular Age (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), and co-author of The Millennial Mosaic: How Pluralism and Choice Are Shaping Canadian Youth and the Future of Canada (Dundurn Press, 2019, with Reginald Bibby and Monetta Bailey) as well as None of the Above: Nonreligious Identity in the U.S. and Canada (New York University Press, 2020, with Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme).

Kati Tervo-Niemelä is a Professor of Practical Theology at the University of Eastern Finland. Tervo-Niemelä also holds a title of Docent in Religious Education (2002) at the University of Helsinki. Her research covers many areas of practical theology, religious education and church and social studies. Tervo-Niemelä has previously worked as a Senior Researcher at Church Research Institute (2000-2012), and as Senior Lecturer and Professor in Church and Social Studies at the University of Helsinki (2012-2018). Her main research interests have been (1) the clergy career and ministry formation; the work orientation and well-being; (2) religion and the lifespan; (3) religious affiliation and disaffiliation, (4) the youth and religion, (5) religious rituals and (6) religion and the media. Tervo-Niemelä is a co-leader of a Templeton-funded project “Transmission of Religion across Generations: A comparative international study of continuities and discontinuities in family socialization” (2019-2022). Tervo-Niemelä is a member of Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (since 2016).

Mia Lövheim is Professor in Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, a member of the scientific board and theme leader within the centre of excellence research programme Impact of Religion: Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy, Uppsala University.

Her research interests focus on representations of religion in Swedish and Nordic daily press, public service media and social media, in particular the interplay between media and social, political and religious change, as well as between gender and religion.

Recent publications include “The mediatized conditions of contemporary religion: Critical status and future directions” (Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, 2019, with Stig Hjarvard,) and “Culture, Conflict and Constitutional right. Representations of Religion in the Daily Press” in Schewel & Wilson, ed. Religion and European Society. A Primer (2019).

Paul Bramadat is Professor and Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria.

He is interested in the ways we imagine religion and spirituality when we talk about diversity, health, security and civil society. Most of his work concerns religion, spirituality, and secularity in North America and Western Europe, although he is increasingly interested in the relationships between these societies and global forces.

His two most recent publications are: Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces (Bloomsbury,  2021, edited with Mar Griera, Julia Martínez-Ariño, & Marian Burchardt); and Religion at the Edge: Nature, Spirituality, and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest  (University of British Columbia Press, 2022, edited with Patricia O’Connell Killen & Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme).

Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo (Canada). She completed her DPhil (PhD equivalent) in sociology at the University of Oxford in 2015.

Her research interests include quantitative methods, sociology of religion, immigration and ethnicity and political sociology.

Recent publications on nonreligion include Religion, Spirituality and Secularity among Millennials: The Generation Shaping American and Canadian Trends (Routledge, forthcoming) and “A Tale of Decline or Change? Working Toward a Complementary Understanding of Secular Transition and Individual Spiritualization Theories” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 60 (3): 516-539 (2021).

Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham is Professor and Dean of Nursing at Trinity Western University, BC.

Her research is in the area of plurality and equity in healthcare, focusing on the intersections of religion, spirituality, race, class, and gender.

She is lead author for Prayer as Transgression? The Social Relations of Prayer in Healthcare (McGill-Queens University Press, 2020), based on a project by the same title, with ethnographic research in London, UK and Vancouver. She is co-author with Marsha Fowler, Richard Sawatzky, and Elizabeth Johnston-Taylor of Religion, religious ethics, and nursing (Springer, 2012).