ABOUT US
"New Approaches to Religious Pluralism in Asia: India-China-Indonesia" is a faculty development fellowships funded by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and supported by Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (The University of Hong Kong), the Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies (Chennai, India) and the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (Yogyakarta, Indonesia).
United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia:
https://unitedboard.org/ |
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences:
http://www.hkihss.hku.hk/ |
Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies:
http://accschennai.org/ |
Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies:
http://icrs.ugm.ac.id/ |
Project coordinator
Dr David A. Palmer is an Associate Professor in the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, which he joined in 2008. He also leads the “Asian Religious Connections” research cluster at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has published several award-winning books articles, journal issues and edited volumes on Chinese religion, modern Daoism, the Baha’i Faith, and modern religious movements. His current research projects focus on local ritual traditions, transnational religious movements, and on faith-based volunteering and NGOs in the Chinese world and Southeast Asia.
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Country convenors
India: Prof. Dr. Felix Wilfred is Emeritus Professor of the State University of Madras. He has been a member of the Vatican International Theological Commission and visiting professor in several international universities, including the University of Frankfurt, University of Nijmegen, Boston College, Ateneo de Manila University, and Fudan University, China. He recently edited a landmark volume The Oxford Handbook on Christianity in Asia published by Oxford University Press, New York and UK. Presently, he is Founder-Director of the Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies (ACCS).
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China: Dr. Yongjia Liang received his Ph.D in Anthropology from Peking University and was a Professor of Anthropology at China Agricultural University. His research interests include the popular religion, religious policy and regulation, nationalism and ethnicity, and kingship in the geographic area of southwest China and its connection with Southeast Asia. He now teaches in the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
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Indonesia: Prof. Dr. Bernard Adeney-Risakotta is professor of Religion and Social Science and founding director and international representative at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies in the Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He also teaches at Duta Wacana Christian University, State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga, and Muhamadiyah Yogyakarta University. Among his many publications are Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World (1995), Dealing with Diversity: Religion, Globalization, Violence, Gender and Disasters in Indonesia (2013), and Visions of a Good Society in Southeast Asia (in press).
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Fellows from India
Dr. Namrata Chaturvedi teaches in the Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. Her research interest lies in devotional poetry, mystical literature, religious thought and inter theological dialogue. She has reading knowledge of Hindi, Sanskrit (basic), Nepali and English. She has edited a volume of essays on Kalidasa’s Abhijnanasakuntalam (forthcoming).
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Dr. Preeti Oza is currently working as a faculty with the department of English of St. Andrew’s College of the University of Mumbai, India. Her core research area id Marginal literature, Dalit writings, Buddhist studies and other related socio-religious literary narratives. She has presented and published research papers in many international and national journals.
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Dr. James Ponniah is Assistant Professor of the Department of Christian Studies at the University of Madras. He has authored The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and edited Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). His areas of research also include Popular Catholicism &Dalit Christianity.
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Dr. Amitha Santiago began her research with her Ph.D. in Caribbean Studies where she worked on her dissertation titled The Gospel According to Babylon: A Critique of White Christian Theology through Select Caribbean Texts- towards a Caribbean Self-Definition. Ever since she has been writing on religion and theology using texts from popular culture, thereby endorsing the culturalist turn.
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Dr. George Thadathil is the founder-director of Salesian Research, Translation and Publication Centre of Salesian College, Sonada, Darjeeling and its Siliguri Campus. He has authored and edited seven books and published over thirty articles in journals and chapters in edited volumes. He is also the series editor of SALESIAN Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, a college publication in its seventh year, included in the UGC (University Grants Commission, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India) List of Journals.
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Fellows from China
Dr. Liu Dongxu is Assistant Professor of the Institute of Global Ethnology and Anthropology, Minzu University of China, Beijing. His major is anthropology and teach the course of theory and methodology of anthropology. He has been studying the effects of marketization and industrialization on Chinese society, and he was engaged in several research projects that examine the religion of Yi people, an ethnic minority now migrating across south China, when he was a doctoral student. He has finished his first monograph named The Order of Mobilization Society: A Study on the Organization and Group Behavior of the Yi People in the Pearl River, based on his Ph.D dissertation.
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Dr. Ruijing Wang had worked for the focus group “Kinship and Social Support in China and Vietnam” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany since 2011. After the four-year doctoral program, she completed her dissertation entitled "Kinship, Cosmology and Support: Toward a Holistic Approach of Childcare in the Akha Community of Southwestern China" and was awarded a doctoral degree with magna cum laude (equivalent to an A) in anthropology. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Chongqing University.
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Dr. Tao Yin is an Assistant Research Fellow of the Centre of Ethnological/Anthropological Theory and Method, Minzu University of China, Beijing. He completed his Ph.D. in the University of Olso in 2008, and his doctoral dissertation focuses on a “law propaganda troupe,” formerly an ethnic rural cult association in a Zhang village in Henan province. In the next few years, he wants to initiate a new research on the millenarian movements in contemporary China, studying the roaming worshippers across different religious sites throughout the country.
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Fellows from Indonesia
Dr. Daniel K. Listijabudi was born in Jepara, Central Java, on February 18, 1971. He graduated from the Faculty of Theology in Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogyakarta with a BD in 1996, and an M.Th in 2006. Continuing his studies at Vrije Universteit Amsterdam, he received the MARRT (Master of Art in Research Reformed Theology) in 2010. In order to obtain his doctoral degree, he continued his research and completed his dissertation in June 2016.
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Dr. Samsul Maarif is a faculty member of the MA program for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Study, Universitas Gadjah Mada. He earned his Ph.D from Arizona State University in religious studies. His research interests include indigenous religions, encounters between “world” and “indigenous” religions, and religion and ecology. His latest publications include Pasang Surut Rekognisi Agama Leluhur dalam Politik Agama di Indonesia (The tides of recognition: indigenous religions in the politics of religion in Indonesia) (CRCS 2017); “Redefinisi Agama, Agama Dunia, dan Agama Leluhur” ("Re-defining religion, world religions, and indigenous religions") (Pusad Paramadina 2017).
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Dr. Al Makin is an associate professor at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University (UIN) and Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies (ICRS) Yogyakarta. His research and teaching areas are classical and modern Islam. His publication ranges from classical to modern themes of religion related to history, sociology, philosophy, and politics. Among his previous publications: Representing the Enemy: Musaylima in Muslim Literature (2010); Challenging Islamic Orthodoxy: the Accounts of Lia Eden and Other Prophets in Indonesia (2016); Plurality, Religiosity, and Patriotism: Critical Insights into Indonesia and Islam (2017), and several journal articles.
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Dr. Dicky Sofjan is a Core Doctoral Faculty in the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), located in the Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. He is involved in a number of networks, including Asian Public Intellectuals (API), American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF/Fulbright), US-Indonesia Council on Religion and Pluralism, and the Global Center for the Study of Spiritually Engaged Sustainability. He is currently the Principal Investigator for a nine-country collaborative research program entitled Religion, Public Policy and Social Transformation in Southeast Asia.
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Dr. Fransiska Widyawati received her Ph.D in intereligious and cultural studies at GajahMada University, Yogyakarta Indonesia in 2013. She is a lecturer and researcher at St. Paul College, Ruteng. She is the head of Research and Community Service. She often becomes a research fellow and international in several activities and organizations. She wrote many articles in local and national journals. Her recent research focuses on the areas of social, religion, women issues and culture.
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