Keynote Speakers

Grace Davie

BA (Exon); Ph D (London); Honorary Doctorate (Uppsala)

Professor of Sociology

Professor Davie’s interests lie in the sociology of religion, with a particular emphasis on patterns of religion in Europe.

Among her publications one can enumerate the following:

Books and chapters:

• with A Bäckström, N Edgardh, P Pettersson, Welfare and Religion in 21st century Europe (Volume Two): Gendered, Religious and Social Change, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2011.
• with A Bäckström, Welfare and Religion in 21st century Europe (Volume One): Configuring the Connections, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2010.
• with P Berger, E Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe: A Theme and Variations, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008.
• The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage, 2007.
• with P Heelas, L Woodhead, Predicting Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative Futures, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003.
• Europe, the Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World, Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002.
• Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994.
• with G Ahern, Inner City God: The Nature of Belief in the Inner City, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1987.
• Understanding religion in Western Europe: A continually evolving mosaic, in Cumper P,Lewis T (eds) Religion, Human Rights and Secular Society in Europe, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013
• Religious America, secular Europe: Framing the debate, in Ben-Rafael E,Sternberg Y (eds) World Religions and Multiculturalism: A Dialectic Relation, Leiden: Brill, 2010, 41-62
• Resacralization, in Turner B (eds) The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 2010, 160-178
• An English example: Exploring the via media in the twenty-first century, in Berger P (eds) Between Relativism and Fundamentalism, Grand Rapids, MI: Eeerdmans, 2010, 35-55
• Thinking broadly and thinking deeply: Two examples of the study of religion in the modern world, in Brown C,Snape M (eds) Secularisation in the Christian World, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010, 219-232
• Thinking sociologically about religion: Contexts, concepts and clarifications, in Barker E (eds) The Centrality of Religion in Social Life: Essays in Honour of James A. Beckford, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 15-28
• Vicarious religion: A methodological challenge, in Ammerman N (eds) Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, Oxford: OUP, 2007, 21-36
• Pluralism, tolerance and democracy: Theory and practice in Europe, in Banchoff T (eds) Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, Oxford University Press, 2007, 223-242
• ‘The sociology of religion’, in Segal R (eds) The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 171-192
• Religious minorities in France: A Protestant perspective, in Beckford J,Richardson J (eds) Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker, London: Routledge, 2003, 159-169
• ‘Seeing Salvation: The use of data as text in the sociology of religion’, in Avis P (eds) Public Faith? The State of Religious Belief and Practice in Britain, London: SPCK, 2003, 28-44
• ‘The evolution of the sociology of religion: Theme and variations’, in Dillon M (eds) Handbook for the Sociology of Religion, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 61-75
• Women’s religiosity, in Smelser ,S ,Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, vol. 24, Pargamon, 2001, 16532-16534
• The persistence of institutional religion in modern Europe, in Woodhead L,Heelas P,Martin D (eds) Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, Routledge, 2001, 101-111
• European religion, in Smelser S,Baltes P (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, vol. 7, Pargamon, 2001, 4925-4929
• ‘French Protestants and the general theory, in Percy M,Walker A (eds) Restoring the Image. Essays on Religion and Society in Honour of David Martin, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001, 69-81

 

Leonard Swidler

Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA where he has taught since 1966. He is the co-founder (in 1964, with Arlene Swidler) and Editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. He is also the Founder/President of the Dialogue Institute — Interreligious, Intercultural, International, and the Founder/President of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (1980–).

Professor Swidler has published more than 180 articles & 60 books, including:

Dialogue for Reunion (1962), Jewish-Christian Dialogues (1966), Bloodwitness for Peace and Unity (1977), Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue (1978) From Holocaust to Dialogue: A Jewish-Christian Dialogue between Americans and Germans (1981), Buddhism Made Plain (1984), Religious Liberty and Human Rights (1986), Breaking down the Wall Between Americans & East Germans, Christians and Jews (1987), Catholic-Communist Collaboration in Italy (1988), After the Absolute: The Dialogical Future of Religious Reflection (1990), Death or Dialogue. From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue (1990), A Bridge to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (1990), Human Rights: Christians, Marxists, and Others in Dialogue (1991), Muslims in Dialogue. The Evolution of a Dialogue over a Generation (1992), For All Life: Toward a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic. An Interreligious Dialogue (1998), Theoria – Praxis. How Jews, Christians, Muslims Can Together Move from Theory To Practice (1999), The Study of Religion in the Age of Global Dialogue (2000).

 

Bassam Tibi

 Professor Bassam Tibi is 2012/13 the Koret Foundation Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of the 2012-books: Islamism and Islam (Yale University Press) and: Islam in Global Politics. Conflict and Cross-Cultural Bridging (Routledge Press).

Professor Tibi’s comprehensive life-time work on Islam was published in 2009 under the title: Islam’s Predicament with Modernity. Religious Reform and Cultural Change, Routledge (London and New York), parallel with his retirement from Göttingen University.

Other books published by professor Tibi in English include:

• The Crisis of Modern Islam: A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age. Translated by Judith von Sivers. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988.
• Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
• Conflict and War in the Middle East: From Interstate War to New Security, new expanded ed. 1998, published in association with WCFIA/Harvard University.
• Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State, first ed. 1980, second ed. 1990, third expanded and revised ed. 1997, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
• The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; updated edition 2002.
• Islam between Culture and Politics. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York Cambridge, Mass: Palgrave, in association with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Harvard University, 2001. 2nd edition, 2005.
• Crusade and Jihad: Islam and the Christian World. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, München, Random House GmbH, 2001.
• Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Routledge, New York, 2008.
• Islam’s Predicament with Cultural Modernity. Religious Reform and Cultural Change Routledge, NY and London, 2009.

Stephen Hunt

Dr. Hunt’s interests are derived from the Sociology of Religion, with a particular interest in Pentecostal and Charismatic movement, the political mobilisation of Christian constituencies, and religious and sexual rights. Among his recent publications are A History of the Charismatic Movement in Britain and the United States of America: The Pentecostal Transformation of Christianity (Edwin Mellen, 2009, 2 vols.), the edited volume Contemporary Christianity and LGBT Sexualities (Ashgate, 2009), the five edited and complied volumes of The Ashgate Library of Essays on Sexuality and Religion (Ashgate, 2010), and (with A. Yip) The Ashgate Research Companion to Contemporary Religion and Sexuality (Ashgate, 2012).