Faculty members
Full-time faculty
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Sowparnika Balaswaminathan
- Assistant Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Heritage & Museums, Art & Craft, Anthropology of Religion, South Asia, Caste, Postcoloniality, Ethics, Aesthetics, Labour, Gender & Sexuality -
Lynda Clarke
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Shiism, Sunni-Shiite relations,Women and Islam,Islamic Law, Islam in the West -
Naftali Cohn
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
- Chair, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Ritual theory, Jewish ritual in film and television,early Judaism, Mishnah, Rabbinic literature, ancient Jewish ritual, narrative theory, feminist theory, affect theory -
Miranda Crowdus
- Assistant Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Alternative Judaism(s), Jewish Liturgy, Jewish Popular Culture, Ethnomusicology, Musicology, Cultural Studies, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sustainability, Ethnography, Critical Gender Studies, Religious Phenomenology, Practice as Research -
Carly Daniel-Hughes
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Women, Gender and Sexuality in Religious Studies; Queer Theory and Cultural Studies; Feminist Theory; History of Christianity; Early Christianity; Roman Empire -
J.F. Marc des Jardins
- Associate Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Tibetan and Chinese religions; Tibetan Bon religion, philosophy, practices and history; Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and popular cults; Tibetan and Chinese Tantric ritual studies; Chinese Daoism and Popular Cults along the Sino-Tibetan frontiers; History of China, Tibet and Central Asia. -
Lorenzo DiTommaso
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Apocalypticism: Ancient to Contemporary Apocalypticism and Popular Culture and Media Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Mediaeval Manuscripts and Manuscript Study -
Richard Foltz
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Iranian History, Religions of Iran, Zoroastrianism, Kurdish Religion, Central Asian history, Tajiks, Ossetia, Caucasus -
Norma Baumel Joseph
- Associate Director, Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Status: ProfessorResearch areas: Religion and gender, Judaism, food studies, Jewish law and gender, Canadian Jewish studies -
Marc Lalonde
- Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Advisor, Religions and Cultures
Status: Senior LectuerResearch areas: Philosophy of Religion, Critical Theory, Jewish and Christian Thought, the philosophy and ethics of Charles Taylor -
Leslie Orr
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Religious & social history of medieval Tamil Nadu; women in pre-colonial India; temple architecture & epigraphy; interactions among and sectarianism in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism -
Norman Ravvin
- Past Chair, Canadian Jewish Studies, Religions and Cultures
Status: ProfessorResearch areas: Canadian Jewish Studies, North American Literature, Holocaust Studies, Eastern Europe, Yiddish literature, Creative Writing
Part-time faculty
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Laurie Lamoureux Scholes
- Part-time Faculty, Religions and Cultures
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Denise Nadeau
- Part-time Facutly and Affiliate, Religion
- À temps partiel, School of Community and Public Affairs
- Part-time Faculty, School of Community and Public Affairs
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Manya Saadi-nejad
- Lecturer, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Mythology, Ancient Iranian Languages, Zoroastrianism -
Sara Terreault
- Part-time Faculty, Religions and Cultures
- Part-time Faculty, Theological Studies
- Part-time Faculty, School of Irish Studies
Research areas: Pilgrimage theory & practice; Celtic Christianity; historical & contemporary spiritual practices; contemplative traditions; theology & the arts; theology & culture; research methodology & pedagogy; Indigenous research methodology & pedagogy
Bird, Frederick (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
After retiring from Concordia University, Dr. Bird is currently a Research Professor at the University of Waterloo and Graduate Officer for the M.A. in Political Science. Dr. Bird's research interests are: International development and business; the practices of global ethics; the political economy of global poverty; comparative ethics; Max Weber. He is currently working on an essay on "Weber and Ethics" and a book examining the development and practices of global ethics (with respect to the environment, business practices, human rights, the uses of armed force, problems of poverty, and the interfaith movement). CV
Despland, Michel (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Dr. Despland retired on May 31, 2011 after more than 45 years of teaching. Dr. Despland passed peacefully on July 31, 2018. His commitment, wisdom, and presence will be missed by all. He was a pillar of this Department.
Lightstone, Jack (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Dr. Lightstone's current research interests are: The social and historical study of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period and within the context of Greco-Roman society and culture; understanding early rabbinic literature in its social and cultural contexts.
Dr. Michael Oppenheim (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Michael Oppenheim retired after more than forty years as a professor in the Department of Religion. He is continuing his research and writing in Jewish Studies, Philosophy of Religion, Psychology of Religion, and Feminism. A forthcoming book, Two Languages of Love: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Modern Jewish Philosophy, explores the productive convergence of these fields. It inaugurates a dialogue between the Jewish philosophers of encounter - Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuael Levinas, and such relational psychoanalysts as Stephen Mitchel, Jessica Benjamin, and Lewis Aron. See CV
Dr. T.S. Rukmani (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Dr. T.S. Rukmani retired on June 30, 2012 after serving as Professor and Chair of Hindu Studies in the Department of Religion since 1996. During her time as Chair in Hindu Studies, Dr. Rukmani organized two international conferences: The Mahabharata: Whatever is Not Here is Nowhere Else (2001), and Hindu Diaspora: Global Perspectives(1997) as well as publishing several books and articles and presenting at many international and national conferences. Dr. Rukmani was the recipient of many awards as well. She also invited many distinguished scholars in the area of Hinduism and Indian philosophy who gave lectures at the University and in the department.
Dr. Ira Robinson (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Ira Robinson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University, where he taught for 42 years. He received his B.A. at John Hopkins University, his B.H.L. at Baltimore Hebrew College, his M.A. at Columbia University and his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He served as the Chair of the Department of Religion and Director of the Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies.
Robinson has written, edited, and translated nineteen books. They include Cyrus Adler: Selected Letters (1985), which won the Kenneth Smilen Award for Judaica non-fiction; Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century (1995), which won a Toronto Jewish Book Award; Moses Cordovero's Introduction to Kabbala: An Annotated Translation of his Or Ne'eray (1994); Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930 (2007) which won the J.I. Segal Prize, A History of Antisemitism in Canada (2015), History, Memory, and Jewish Identity (2016), Les Juifs Hassidiques de Montréal (2019), and, most recently, A Kabbalist in Montréal: the Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg (2021).
Robinson has also published over seventy articles in journals such as Studies in Religion, Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, American Jewish Archives, Jewish Quarterly Review, Judaism, Modern Judaism, Canadian Ethnic Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies.
He is past president of the Canadian Society for Jewish Studies, the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, and the Jewish Public Library of Montreal. He is the 2013 winner of the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award from the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. See cv
Dr. Sheila McDonough (Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
Dr. Sheila McDonough, a longtime member of Concordia’s Department of Religion was the first woman Islamic scholar in Canada, she received an honorary doctorate at the spring 2002 convocation of Queen’s University. As an undergraduate at McGill, Dr. McDonough came under the influence of religion historian Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, and became the first female graduate student at McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies. She taught for three years at Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore, Pakistan, to gain experience in the Muslim world, and that experience shaped her academic interests and her interest in promoting the understanding of Islam. Dr. McDonough joined the department as Assistant Professor in 1964.
Engler, Steven
Professor Engler's research interests are in Brazilian religions and in theories and methodology in the study of religion. He is currently Professor in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University and Professor Colaborador at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.
Nadeau, Denise
Dr. Nadeau is of mixed European heritage from Quebec. She is currently a visitor in the traditional homelands of the Lekwungen on Vancouver Island. Her current research interests include Indigenous law as it affects Indigenous-settler relations, decolonization of the body, and the deconstruction of whiteness and colonialism in Christianity. She is the author of numerous articles and of Unsettling Spirit: A Journey into Decolonization (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020).
Palmer, Susan
Contact Susan Palmer.
Kaell, Hillary
Hillary Kaell is Associate Professor of anthropology and religion at McGill University and a faculty fellow at Concordia University's Centre for Sensory Studies, where she co-directs the Sensing Atmospheres working group (2020-2022). She writes about North American Christianity, often focusing on how Christians make and imagine global connections. She is editor of Everyday Sacred: Religion in Contemporary Quebec (McGill-Queens UP 2017), and author of Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage (New York UP 2014) and, most recently, Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States (Princeton UP 2020). She also serves as co-editor of the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion book series at Palgrave Macmillan press.