Who's Who in Research
From Studying Religion and New Media
This page provides information on scholars engaged in studying religion and new media.
Heidi Campbell
specializes in religious community online; religious authority online; Christian, Jewish & Muslim responses to the Internet and religious use of mobile phones.
Web: http://comm.tamu.edu/people/campbell.html
Blog: http://religionmeetsnewmedia.blogspot.com/
Contact Email: heidic@tamu.edu
Heidi Campbell is Assistant Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University where she teaches in Telecommunications and Media Studies. Since 1997 she has studied religion and the internet and what impact new media technologies are having on religious communities. She has written on a variety of topics including Christianity online, new media ethics, technology and theology and religious community’s response to mass media. Her work has appeared variety of books and journals on themes related to religion and media including New Media and Society, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Contemporary Religion, the book Religion Online (Dawson & Cowan, Routledge 2004) and she is author of Exploring Religious Community Online (Peter Lang, 2005) which explores the relationship between online and offline Christian communities and implications online religion has for offline faith communities and religious institutions.
Paul Emerson Teusner specializes in religious community and authority online, religion in the blogosphere and online religious advertising.
Blog: http://teusner.org/
Contact Email: paul@teusner.org
Paul is a PhD student at the School of Applied Communications at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. His research project is titled Emerging church bloggers in Australia: Prophets, priests and rulers in God's virtual world, where he is examining the relationship between blogging technology and religious discourse in the movement, and what impact these bloggers have on how the emerging church sees its past, present and future in Australia.
Pauline Hope Cheong
specializes in the cultural implications of online religious community and authority, technology adoption by faith organizations and transnational religious communication.
Web: http://humancommunication.clas.asu.edu/people/cheong.shtml
Blog:
Contact Email: pauline.cheong@asu.edu
Pauline Hope Cheong is Associate Professor of Communication, at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University. She researches the social implications of communication technologies for minority and marginalized populations. Her principal interests are the ways in which newer media are culturally embedded in users’ context and implicated in social stratification processes and social capital relationships. Her research nodes include ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, youths, the medically vulnerable, religious leaders and laity. Her work on new media and culture has appeared in multiple international journals including New Media and Society, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Information, Communication and Society.
Peter Fischer-Nielsen
specializes in churches' online communication strategies, the interrelationship between Christian Internet use and secularization and the theological implications of the churches' online communication
Web: http://person.au.dk/en/pfn@teo.au.dk
Blog: http://www.e-religion.dk
Contact Email: pfn@teo.au.dk
Bio: Peter Fischer-Nielsen is a PhD fellow at the University of Aarhus, The Faculty of Theology, Denmark (2008-2010). He is doing research on how the pastors of the national Lutheran church in Denmark are communicating on the Internet. More people in Denmark are engaged in religion on the Internet than in the churches. How does this challenge affect the church and its pastors? Do they see the Internet as a place to win back souls - or do they fear further secularization by using the Internet? What theological implications will the online communication have for the church and how do the pastors understand these? Analysis of the pastors' responses compared with prevailing online religious behaviour patterns will lead to some predictions about what consequences the Internet communication could have for the church in the future.
Louise Connelly specializes in Buddhism online; blogs; identity online; early Indian Buddhism; Abhidhamma studies; communities online.
Web: http://www.louiseconnelly.co.uk
Blog:http://connellyblog.blogspot.com/
Contact Email: lconnelly_research@yahoo.co.uk
Bio: Louise Connelly is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, based in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Asian Studies). Specialising in Buddhism and blog studies her research focuses on identity within blogs on Buddhism. Her research aim is to analyse the online self through the use of Buddhist philosophical frameworks, affirming that the online self is not in conflict with the Buddhist understanding of no-self (anatta).
Mark D. Johns specializes in... internet research methods, research ethics, interactions on BeliefNet and religion on facebook.com
Web: http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
Contact Email: mjohns@luther.edu
Bio: Mark D. Johns (Ph.D. U. of Iowa, 2000) is currently serving on the faculty of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa as an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Communication Studies, where he teaches courses in media studies and public speaking. His research interests include social impacts of new communication technologies and intersections of media, religion, and culture. An ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (http://www.elca.org/) he has published a number of resources for the church publishing house, Augsburg Fortress (http://www.augsburgfortress.org/) as well as being co-editor of Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, and Ethics, published in 2004 by Peter Lang Publishers.
(Maria) Beatrice Bittarello
specializes in Contemporary Paganism online; re-craftings of ancient myths on the World Wide Web; representations of sacred space (online and offline).
Web: http://www.freewebs.com/mariabea/index.htm
Blog:
Contact Email: beatrice_bittarello@fastmail.net
Bio: Maria Beatrice Bittarello has a PhD in Religious Studies (University of Stirling, 2007). Her main research focus is on contemporary re-craftings of ancient myths, and on popular culture re-workings of high culture elements. Her published work includes articles on contemporary Pagan mythopoesis and construction of identity online (Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2008; book chapter in Reading spiritualities--Llewellyn and Sawyer, Ashgate 2008), and virtual ritual (Religious Studies and Theology, 2008; The Pomegranate 2008).
Larissa Grau
specializes in religious fundamentalist on line; religious martyrdom; religious terrorism; religious-mytical-political narrative on web; Hamas.
Web:http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.jsp?id=K4218631J0
Blog: http://digitalreligion.wordpress.com
Contact Email: larissa.grau@gmail.com
Bio: Larissa Grau is a master degree student at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (Brazil. Since 2005, she has studied the islamic suicidal fundamentalist and their representation on the web. She has written articles about new mediatic identities, religious narrative, myth of the hero, interaction between the logic of the digital media and logic of religion, temporality, imortality, memory and eternity on ciberspace. She is a member of a research group that studies the social-technical network, web methodoly and wiki format.
Wyl McCully
specializes in religion online and the impact of Internet technologies on traditional religious organizations
Web:
Blog:
Contact Email: mccullyw@msu.edu
Bio: Wyl is a PhD student in the Media and Information Studies program at Michigan State University. He is interested first in how American churches are reacting to the introduction and proliferation of a changing media format. His interests also take him into online religious worlds to study the affects of spirituality on CMC theories and research. He is currently working on studies of church websites and the transition churches are making.
Alison R. Marshall
specializes in Chinese Religion. Her past research programs include a project to examine the way people “do” religion in the 21st Century as principal investigator of the SSHRC funded Virtual Ritual Theatre of Lingji performance (2002-2006) (experienced at http://lingji.brandonu.ca).
Web:http://www.brandonu.ca/academic/arts/Departments/Religion/Marshallhome.html
Blog:
Contact Email:marshall.alison78@gmail.com
Bio: Alison R. Marshall an associate professor in the Religion Department at Brandon University. Her research explores the “doing” of religion in frontier regions of Canada.
Tim Hutchings
specializes in online Christian activity.
Contact Email: t.r.b.hutchings@dur.ac.uk
Bio: Tim Hutchings is a PhD researcher at Durham University in the UK. He is conducting an ethnographic study of four "online churches" (operating across Second Life, webcasting, blogs, forums, chatrooms and social network sites), focusing on the research field of "online community" through the specific issues of relationship, worship and authority. This project is due for submission in September 2009.
Susan P. Wyche
specializes in investigating how culturally different religious groups adopt and use technology.
Web:http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~spwyche/
Blog:
Contact Email:spwyche[at]cc/gatech.edu
Bio: I am a researcher in the fields of Human-Centered Computing (HCC) and Industrial Design with interests in: how technology supports religious practices, domestic technology, and speculative design.Currently, I am a fifth year doctoral candidate in the GVU Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My dissertation research investigates how culturally different religious groups adopt and use technology.Prior to coming to GaTech, I received a MS from Cornell University. My undergraduate degree is in Industrial Design and History from Carnegie Mellon University.
Anneke Klein
specializes in religious community online; the connection between religion, individualism and the use of the Internet; religious healing and the Internet.
Web:http://www.facebook.com/people/Anneke-Klein/539831659
Blog:
Contact Email:amsterdam@studiopronto.nl
Bio: Master student Religious Studies University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Bachelor thesis 2008: 'Christian Communities in the Virtual World of Second Life' is a case study of the community aspects of three Christian groups in Second Life.
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