Ruth Illman is director of the Donner Institute for Research into Religion and Culture at Åbo Akademi University Foundation (SÅA) in Turku, Finland. Her research concerns questions pertaining to Jewish life in the Nordics today, cultural encounters and interreligious dialogue, ethnographic research methodology within cultural studies. She was co-editor of a volume on religion and […]

Marie Juul Petersen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute of Human Rights with expertise in human rights and religion; the right to freedom of religion or belief; development and religion; faith-based organizations; vernacularization of human rights; refugees and religion.

Heinz Werner Wessler is a professor of Indology at Uppsala University in Sweden. He focuses on Hindi and Urdu languages, cultural history, as well as religion and society in India and Pakistan.

Jeanet Bentzen is associate professor in the department of economics at the University of Copenhagen. Bentzen’s research focuses on economic approaches to decision-making and culture and includes topics related to religion, institutions, economic growth, economic history and geographic confounders.

Teemu Taira is senior lecturer in the study of religion, University of Helsinki, and docent at the department of study of religion, University of Turku, Finland. His research has focused on three areas: religion in the media; the new visibility of atheism and nonreligion; and discursive study of the category of “religion.” He has published on paganism […]

Henrik Bogdan is professor in religious studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His main areas of research are alternative forms of religion, such as Western esotericism, New Religious Movements and secret/initiatory societies.

Xenia Zeiler is an associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on online expressions of Hinduism and the relationship between video games and religion.

These 19 people can help you understand the significance of this month’s United Methodist conference on human sexuality.

Bishop Christian Alsted leads the Nordic-Baltic Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church. He also serves on the board of trustees for Baltic Methodist Theological Seminary.