Religion and Public Life Series
The Religion and Public Life lecture series presents public conversations that expand on current theories and spur debate about religion and secularism, considering the range of secularisms and institutionalizations of religion in Europe, the US, and other parts of the world. Lectures in the series examine specific approaches to how something called “religion” is manifest in public life, and cover timely topics including law, museums and cultural institutions, education and health provisions, politics/diplomacy, prisons, and protest and social movements.
Matthew Engelke is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and co-ordinates the School’s Programme for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion. His research focuses in the broadest sense on the connections between religion and culture, primarily in Africa and Britain. Engelke runs Prickly Paradigm Press with Marshall Sahlins. He was deputy editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa from 2006-2010, and editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 2010-2013; he currently serves on the advisory boards of the Journal of Southern African Studies and Religion and Society. Engelke is the author of two books: God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England, and A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. His writing has also appeared in numerous academic journals and edited collections, as well as on-line for the Guardian, the Times and Tate Modern, Public Books, and the Immanent Frame.