Staff research areas and possibilities available for postgraduate research:
Associate Professor Elisabetta Porcu (Head of Department)
Religion and Society, Asian Religions, Japanese Religions, Buddhism
Elisabetta Porcu is the current Head of department who specializes in Japanese Religions in contemporary society. Her research interests include East Asian religions; Buddhism; religion and popular culture (including manga and anime); religion and media; orientalism; secularization; religious festivals; religion and sacred spaces; as well as Asian religions in Africa. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Japan where she has lived and worked for nine years. In her work she combines theoretical concepts with empirical research.
Professor Asonzeh Ukah
Christianity in Africa, African Religions, Religion and Globalisation, Pentecostalism, Urbanism and Sacred Space
Asonzeh Ukah areas of interests are in religion and globalisation; transnational religion; media and material culture of Pentecostalism; Pentecostal advertising: faith and films; urbanism and sacred space.
Professor Sa'diyya Shaikh
Islamic Studies, Feminist Theory, Islamic Feminism, Gender and Religion, Islamic Mysticism
Sa'diyya Shaikh specializes in the area of Islamic Studies with a focus on gender, feminism and Islamic mysticism. Her research interests include theoretical developments in Islamic feminism, critical scholarship on gender violence and religion, and feminist readings of pre-modern Islamic texts, with a particular interest in the writings of the Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi. She has also published empirically-based research papers on South African Muslim women on issues relating to marriage, sexuality and gender relations.
Dr Louis Blond
Jewish Thought, Philosophy and Religion, Natural Law and Religion, Otherness, Politics and Religion
Louis Blond focuses on meaning in contemporary philosophy and philosophy’s relationship with politics, critical theory and religious discourse, particularly Jewish Thought. Previously he has explored responses to nihilism and homelessness in the work of thinkers such Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger. His current research includes a re-examination of the philosophical descriptions of otherness, devekut, and the relationship between natural law and religion and politics.
Dr Ala Alhourani
Islam, Religion, Aesthetic and Ethics, Art and Material Culture
Dr Ala Alhourani holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of the Western Cape. His research interests include: Islam in Africa; aesthetic of religion and sensory culture; the public life of religion and ordinary ethics; performances and art, research methodology and visual ethnography.