Jan A. Ali is a sociologist of religion, with special reference to Islam. He is a Senior Lecturer in Islam and Modernity in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and concurrently holds a post as the Community and Research Analyst in the Religion and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. Jan Ali is author of Islamic Revivalism Encounters the Modern World: A Study of the Tablīgh Jamā‘at (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2012).
Nachman Ben-Yehuda is a Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He is the author of The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (1996), Theocratic Democracy: The Social Construction of Religious and Secular Extremism (2010), Sacrificing Truth (2002), Betrayals and Treason: Violations of Trust and Loyalty (2001), and Atrocity, Deviance and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices During the World Wars (2013).
Henrik Bogdan is Professor in History of Religions at the University of Gothenburg. His main areas of research are Western Esotericism, New Religious Movements, and Freemasonry. He is the author of Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation (2007), editor of Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley: A Correspondence, by Aleister Crowley and David Curwen (2010), co-editor of Occultism in a Global Perspective (2013), Sexuality and New Religious Movements (2014), and The Brill Handbook on Freemasonry (2014).
Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Conversion Among the Germanic People (1998), Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), and The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011). She is the editor (with Christopher Hartney) of Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honour of Garry W. Trompf (Brill, 2010) and (with Alex Norman) Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (Brill, 2012).
Helen Farley is a Senior Research Fellow in Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include the cultural history of various currents of esoteric thought, particularly tarot. She is actively involved in researching religion and technology and was the project leader of the Religion Bazaar project in Second Life. She also is Senior Lecturer at the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland where she researches educational technology for teaching and learning.
Mattias Gardell is Chair of the Department of the History of Religions at Uppsala University, Sweden. His publications include In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (1996), Rasrisk (1998; 2003), Gods of the Blood. White Separatism and the Pagan Revival (2003), Bin Laden i våra hjärtan. Globaliseringen och framväxten av politisk islam [Bin Laden in Our Hearts. Globalization and the Rise of Political Islam] (2005), Tortyrens återkomst [The Return of Torture] (2008), Islamofobi [Islamophobia] (2010).
Lorenz Graitl is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies. He received his PhD in sociology from Freie Universität Berlin. His first book, Sterben als Spektakel: Zur kommunikativen Dimension des politisch motivierten Suizids (VS Springer, 2012), discusses the historical genesis and communicative aspects of different forms of political suicide, as well as corresponding discourses of legitimization. Currently he is working on the mediatized dispute over Telangana.
Christopher Hartney is a Lecturer in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney where he teaches on religion and violence and religion and film. He specializes in the study of new religions in East Asia and Vietnam, and has published on Caodaism, Vietnam’s largest indigenous religion. He also works on aesthetics and is the Australian delegate to the International Congress of Aesthetics. He is co-editor (with Alex Norman) of the journal Literature and Aesthetics.
James R. Lewis is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø in Norway. His books have been published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Brill. His Cults in America (1998) and The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements (2004) both won CHOICE book awards. In the area of New Religions and violence, he has edited anthologies on the Branch Davidians, the Solar Temple, and a general collection on Violence and New Religious Movements (2011).
Rebecca Moore is Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, where she teaches classes in new religions and religion in America. Former co-editor of Nova Religio for ten years, she maintains the widely respected website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. She has written and published extensively on Peoples Temple and Jonestown, and co-edited the book Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America (2004). Her latest book on the subject is Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple (2009).
Lynn S. Neal is Associate Professor of Religion at Wake Forest University. Her research focuses on American religious history, particularly the relationship between religion and popular culture, as well as the history of religious intolerance. Her publications include “They’re Freaks!: The Cult Stereotype in Fictional Television Shows, 1958–2008” (in Nova Religio, 2011), Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History, with John Corrigan (2010), and Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction (2006).
Katarina Plank is a historian of religion. She was awarded her doctorate by Lund University in 2011 for a thesis on Buddhism and meditation in Sweden. She is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at Gothenburg University on a project on Thai Buddhism in Sweden, focused on migration, gender and religion. She has published several articles in Nordic journals and books on topics of materiality, sexuality, mindfulness and meditation in relation to Buddhist traditions.
Thomas Robbins is a semi-retired sociologist of religion. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina (1974). He is the author of Cults, Converts and Charisma (1988) and the co-author of six collections of original papers including Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem (1997) and Misunderstanding Cults (2001). He has published numerous articles, essays, and reviews in social science and religious studies journals.
John Walliss is Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Social Science at Liverpool Hope University, UK. He is the author of several books on aspects of contemporary millenarianism, including Responding to Late Modernity: The Brahma Kumaris as a ‘Reflexive Tradition’ (2002) and Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World (2004).