Dr Amanullah De Sondy

Dr Amanullah De Sondy is Head of the Study of Religions Department at University College Cork in Ireland and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Islam. Aman has taught Islamic Studies at Ithaca College and University of Miami in the USA and is an affiliate of the University of Glasgow’s Theology and Religious Studies department. He is the author of the Crisis of Islamic Masculinities (Bloomsbury Academic 2014) and Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Introduction to Monotheism with Michelle A. Gonzalez and William S. Green (Bloomsbury Academic 2020). Aman has been broadcasting “thought for the day” with BBC Radio Scotland for nearly twenty years, is a regular contributor to the News Panel on RTE 1 ‘Today’ TV show and is passionate about the public understanding of religion through the themes of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and pluralism.

Aman tweets @desondy

Dr Jenny Butler

Dr Jenny Butler is a lecturer in the Study of Religions Department and a Principal Investigator of the Environmental Research Institute (ERI). She is the Department's Postgraduate Studies Coordinator. Her research interests are in the areas of: New Religious Movements, Western esotericism, the anthropology of ritual and magic, folk religion, traditional cosmologies and practices, and the intersection of religion and folklore. She welcomes discussion with potential PhD students who wish to work in these areas. 

Dr Lidia Julianna Guzy

Lidia Julianna Guzy, Dr. Hab. (University College Cork), l.guzy@ucc.ie. MA Anthropology Programme Director and Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in South Asian Religions at University College Cork (UCC), National University of Ireland. She is a Director of the Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre (MEWSC) at UCC, Director of India Study Centre Cork (ISCC) and member of the South Asia and Latin America Regional Working Groups at UCC.  She has a bi-national PhD in Ethnology/Social Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany (2002) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)(2003), Paris (thèse en co-tutelle). In 2011, she was awarded a Habilitation (professorial qualification) at the Faculty of Cultural and Historical Studies, in the field of Study of Religions, at Freie Universität (FU) Berlin. She is a Specialist in the anthropology of South Asia, Indigenous Studies and the anthropology of museums with focus on Indian goddess worship, Hindu reform movements, religions of India, indigenous knowledge systems, indigenous sustainability, eco-cosmologies, indigenous religions, intangible cultural heritage and the aesthetics of cultures and religions.  

Dr James Alexander Kapalo

James A Kapaló is Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions. He is an historian and ethnologist of religion focusing on religious minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. He was Principal Investigator of the ERC Project Hidden Galleries from 2016-2021.

Dr Tatsuma Padoan

Dr Tatsuma Padoan is Lecturer in East Asian Religions at the UCC. He is co-director of SENSA Lab at UCC, and a research associate at SOAS, University of London. As an anthropologist and a semiotician, he has worked on ritual in Japan – including pilgrimage, asceticism, ritual apprenticeship, religious materiality and spirit possession – as well as on the study of design practices and the politics of urban space. His monograph Towards a Semiotics of Pilgrimage: Ritual Space, Memory and Narration in Japan and Elsewhere is forthcoming for DeGruyter.

Dr Brendan McNamara

Brendan McNamara is an historian of religions focussing on 'East-West' encounters at the turn of the 20th century. His interests also include the history of the Bahá'í Faith, the religious landscape in Ireland before independence, and the contribution of Irish scholar administrators to the production of knowledge around religions in colonial India. His publications include:  

The Reception of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Britain; East comes West, Leiden: Brill, 2021. 

The Study of Religions in Ireland; Past, Present and Future, (Editor with Hazel O'Brien), London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

Dr Danny Forde

Dr Danny Forde is a philosopher specialising in realist phenomenology, religious experience and the psychedelic experience. He has presented his work at the INSIGHT conference in Berlin, UCD, the British Society for Phenomenology and the Irish Philosophical Society, amongst others. His interests include Platonism, Spinozism, psychotherapy and the philosophy of martial arts.

Marilena Frisone

Marilena Frisone is a social anthropologist who is currently working as assistant lecturer in the Study of Religions Department, UCC. She has taught at UCC in modules on Indigenous Religions, Hinduism and Indian Religions, Introduction to Asian Studies, and within the MA programme in Anthropology. She has conducted fieldwork in Nepal, researching on Nepalese followers of Japanese New Religions and focusing on religious conversion, ritual, and medical pluralism. More recently she has also conducted fieldwork among Newar communities in London, researching on language revitalisation, heritage, and food practices in the diaspora.

Robyn McAuliffe

Robyn McAuliffe is a PhD student in UCC’s School of English. Having completed a BA in English in University College Cork in 2020, Robyn was awarded a CACSSS Excellence Masters Scholarship and completed a Masters by Research in 2021. During her undergraduate, Robyn was awarded the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize for her undergraduate dissertation on the use of rape as a literary device in Old English hagiography. She is currently the OMR officer for UCC’s English Literature Society and the organiser of UCC’s Inkwell: Medieval to Renaissance Symposium.

Dr Tatiana Vagramenko

Dr Tatiana Vagramenko is Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at University College Cork. She is a Principal Investigator in the SFI-IRC Pathway-funded project “History Declassified: The KGB and the Religious Underground in Soviet Ukraine” (2022-2026) and in the British Library EAP project “Religious Minorities Archives and the War in Ukraine” (2023-2024). She has held postdoctoral appointments at University of Barcelona in Spain, Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Friedrich Schiller University in Germany, and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Maynooth University in 2014. Vagramenko’s research is focused on the history and memory of state repression and cultural opposition in Soviet Ukraine, based on in-depth reconsideration of recently opened Soviet-era secret police (former KGB) archives in Ukraine.

Elizabeth Slade

T: 353(021) 4903326
E: eslade@ucc.ie 

Room 2.22, O'Rahilly Building,
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.