Henrik Bogdan is Associate 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); and co-editor of several works, including Handbook of Freemasonry (2014) and Sexuality and New Religious Movements (2014).
James D. Chancellor is retired W. O. Carver Professor of World Religions from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has a PhD from Duke University in History of Religion and is the author of Life in The Family: An Oral History of the Children of God (2000).
George D. Chryssides was Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, England, from 2001 to 2008, and is currently Honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at the University of Birmingham. Recent publications include The A to Z of Jehovah’s Witnesses (2009); Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group (2011); Christians in the Twenty-First Century (with Margaret Z. Wilkins, 2011); and Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2012). He has co-edited (with Benjamin E. Zeller) The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (2014); and is currently working on Jehovah’s Witnesses: Continuity and Change, to be published in 2014.
Jocelyn H. DeHaas received her PhD from the University of New Mexico. She works at the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College teaching anthropology and religious studies. Dr. DeHaas has been studying the Church Universal and Triumphant since 1994.
Helen Farley is a Senior Research Fellow with the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland and a Senior Lecturer (Digital Futures) at the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland. She has taught and researched in world religions, meditative and esoteric traditions, religion and popular culture, and religion in virtual worlds. She was the convenor of the Alternative Expressions of the Numinous Conference Series and the editor of the journal Khthónios.
Eugene V. Gallagher is the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of Expectation and Experience: Explaining Religious Conversion (1990); The New Religious Movements Experience in America (2004); and co-author of Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995). With W. Michael Ashcraft he is the co-editor of the five-volume Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in the United States (2006). He is a co-General Editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Associate Editor of Teaching Theology and Religion.
Mattias Gardell is Nathan Söderblom Professor of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. His numerous 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); and Bin Laden i våra hjärtan: Globaliseringen och framväxten av politisk islam (Bin Ladin in our hearts: Globalization and the rise of political Islam) (2005). The latter study is currently being translated into English, Spanish, Arabic, and Norwegian.
Marion S. Goldman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Oregon and Scholar in Residence at the Portland Center for Public Humanities at Portland State University. Her 2012 book The American Soul Rush focuses on the growth and spread of alternative spirituality in the United States and the ways that Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, helped shape the spiritual marketplace. She has written extensively about the Rajneesh/Osho Movement in her book Passionate Journeys: Why Successful Women Joined a Cult (1999) and in numerous academic and popular articles.
Malcolm Haddon is a sessional lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University. He is also a senior adviser to the New South Wales Government on multicultural affairs, specializing in issues relating to religion and violent extremism. His forthcoming book Transcending Culture with the Hare Krishnas: Conversion, Translation, Revelation will be published in 2014.
Manon Hedenborg-White is a PhD candidate in History of Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her dissertation deals with the social construction of gender in contemporary occultism. She has written and spoken on a number of topics pertaining to gender and sexuality in modern Western esotericism and Paganism.
Kjersti Hellesøy is currently a graduate student at the University of Tromsø, currently researching independent Scientology. She holds degrees in Religious Studies and in Russian language and literature. She has a special interest in New Religious Movements, religion and violence, Christianity and Islam. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Scientology (2015).
Anne Kalvig is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has published the book Spiritual Health: Views of Life among Alternative Practitioners (2013, in Norwegian) and various articles and chapters on themes within the field of alternative spirituality, such as alternative therapy, folk medicine, crop circles, spiritual tourism, spiritism, religion and media, popular culture, and death.
Siv Ellen Kraft is professor in the History of Religions, University of Tromsø, Norway. Kraft has written extensively on Theosophy, New Age spiritualities, and religious revival among the Sami, including a number of articles, four edited books and four monographs. Recent books include Religion i pressen (with Cora Alexa Døving, 2013) and Hva er nyreligiøsitet (2011).
Göran Larsson holds a PhD in Religious Studies. He has published extensively on Islam and Muslims in Europe and on Islamic theology and media and communication studies. His most recent publication is Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates (2011).
James R. Lewis is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø and a highly published scholar in the field of New Religious Movements. His titles have won four book awards. Lewis currently co-edits three book series and edits two academic journals. Recent publications include The Children of Jesus and Mary (2010, co-authored with Nicolas Levine); Violence and New Religious Movements (2011); and Cults: A Reference and Guide (2012).
Sarah Lewis is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She teaches courses in New Religious Movements and has written on the Unification Church and The Urantia Book.
Rebecca Moore is distinguished professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, with a PhD in Religious Studies from Marquette University (1996). Dr. Moore specializes in American religions, focusing on New Religious Movements. Her most recent book is Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple (2009). She co-manages the website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu), a digital archive of relevant primary source documents.
Jody Myers is a professor of Religious Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interest is on modern and contemporary religious thought, with a focus on Orthodox Jews. She is author of Seeking Zion: Modernity and Messianic Activism in the Writings of Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (2003); Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in America (2007); and numerous articles in academic journals and collective volumes.
Erik A. W. Östling works as a study administrator for the history of religions at the department for ethnology, history of religions and gender studies at Stockholm University. He has been studying the history of religions, social anthropology and philosophy at the university.
Jesper Aa. Petersen is Associate Professor at the Programme for Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He is the editor of several anthologies, most recently The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity (2012, with Per Faxneld), and has published numerous articles on contemporary Satanism and occulture in scholarly journals, anthologies, encyclopedias, and textbooks. His current fields of interest are the academization of Religious Education, secularity and non-religion, and transgressive art and religion.
Martin Repp is lecturer for Religious Studies at Heidelberg University and the editor of the journal Japanese Religions. He had been professor for comparative Religious Studies at Ryukoku University (Kyoto) and lectured at Kyoto, Doshisha, and Kwansei Gakuin universities. He did extensive research on Aum Shinrikyo, including field studies and interviews with members between 1995 and 2009. The other fields of his research are Chinese and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism as well as forms and contents of intra- and interreligious communication.
Jane Skjoldli is a PhD student in the study of religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. Skjoldli wrote her master’s thesis on material aspects of the veneration of Pope John Paul II in Rome and has also conducted some research on charismatic Christianity in Norway. Theoretical interests include cognitive approaches to religion, material and visual religion.
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen is currently a graduate student at the University of Tromsø. Her research interests include New Religious Movements (especially Indian-oriented movements), the New Age, religion and gender, and religion and nature. She has published a number of articles and book reviews in scholarly academic journals, and is co-editor of the forthcoming collection, Handbook of Nordic New Religions (2014).