Board and Executive Committee

David Koussens

President of the CCSR

David Koussens is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Sherbrooke, holder of the Research Chair in Law, Religion and Secularism and member of the Research Center for Society, Law and Religions at the University of Sherbrooke (SoDRUS).

After training as a lawyer in France and Quebec and exercising legal functions at the Council of State and the French Ministry of Culture and Communications, he completed a doctorate in sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He was Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2010-2011) and postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Research in Ethics at the University of Montreal (2011). As part of his research, he was also a visiting researcher at the London School of Economics (March 2011), at the Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs at the University of California at Berkeley (August-September 2012) and at Perelman Center for Philosophy of Law of the Free University of Brussels (April-June 2013).

His research offers a comparative analysis of social representations of secularism and national legal systems for regulating religious diversity. They also aim to explore the various qualifications of religion by social, political and religious actors, and then to retrace how these qualifications condition participation and registration of religious groups in public space.

Faculté de droit
Université de Sherbrooke
Bureau A7-261
2500 boul. Université
Sherbrooke (Québec)
J1K 2R1

Jennifer A. Selby

Vice-president of the CCSR

Jennifer A. Selby is associate professor and graduate coordinator of Religious Studies and affiliate member of Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Her ethnographic research considers Islam in contemporary France and Canada, focusing on secularization theory, Muslim studies, and gender. She is the author of over 30 articles and book chapters, co-author of Beyond Accommodation: Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians (UBC Press, 2018), author of Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), and co-editor of Debating Sharia (University of Toronto Press, 2012) and Producing Islam(s) in Canada (forthcoming with University of Toronto Press).

In addition to secretarial duties with the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, Selby is co-chair of the Anthropology of Religion section and steering committee member of the Religion and Migration Unit, both in the American Academy of Religion.

Jean-Pierre Fortin

Secretary of the CCSR

Catherine Foisy

Treasurer of the CCSR

Catherine Foisy (PhD Humanities 2012, Université Concordia) est professeure du christianisme au Québec et dans le monde contemporain au Département de sciences des religions de l’UQÀM et chercheure régulière au CRIDAQ depuis septembre 2013. Formée en science politique, philosophie, sociologie et en histoire orale et publique, dans le monde anglo-saxon et francophone, elle s’intéresse principalement aux formes actuelles de la mission, au christianisme social québécois dans une perspective transnationale ainsi qu’aux rapports entre femmes, féminisme et christianisme en contexte québécois.

Autrice d’une trentaine d’articles scientifiques consacrés principalement au fait missionnaire contemporain, elle a publié Au risque de la conversion. L’expérience québécoise de la mission au XX^e siècle (1945-1980) chez McGill-Queen’s University Press (2017). Elle a codirigé deux ouvrages collectifs : Les catholiques québécois et la laïcité (PUL, 2018) avec David Koussens et La mission dans tous ses états (XIX^e-XXI^e siècle). Circulations et réseaux transnationaux (Peter Lang, 2021) avec Bruno Dumons et Christian Sorrel. Elle prépare actuellement un ouvrage collectif avec Frédéric Dejean sur l’étude des christianismes en contexte postchrétien et une monographie sur le christianisme social québécois.

Lori Beaman

Past president of the CCSR

Lori G. Beaman, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., is the Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and Social Change, and a professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her primary research interest is examining how nonreligious and religious people can coexist in an increasingly diverse and complex world. This interest forms the focus of her current research project, entitled Nonreligion in a Complex Future. She is the recipient of the 2017 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Impact Award in the Insight Category and holds an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University.

Richard Ascough

Book Series Editor, "Studies in Christianity and Judaism"

Richard Ascough is a Professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University at Kingston. His research focuses on the formation early Christ groups and Greco-Roman religious culture, with particular attention to various types of associations. He has published widely in the field with more than forty articles and essays and ten books, including Associations in the Greco-Roman World (with John Kloppenborg and Philip Harland, 2012) and 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Encountering the Christ Group at Thessalonike (2014). He has been recognized for his innovative and effective teaching in a number of ways, including the 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2018.

Natasha Bakht

CASIM President

Natasha Bakht is a Full Professor of law at the University of Ottawa and the Shirley Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession (2020-2024). Professor Bakht’s research interests are generally in the area of law, culture and minority rights and specifically in the intersecting area of religious freedom and women’s equality. She has written extensively in the area of religious arbitration. Her research on the niqab analyzes the unwarranted popular panic concerning Muslim women who cover their faces, and explores systemic barriers to inclusion perpetuated by Canada’s legal and political system. Her book In Your Face: Law Justice and Niqab-Wearing Women in Canada was listed in the Hill Times 100 Best Books of 2020 and received the 2020-2021 Huguenot Society of Canada Award. She has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v NS, 2012 SCC 72, a case involving a niqab-wearing sexual assault complainant.

In the area of family law, she has co-written a textbook entitled Families and the Law, 3rd ed (Concord: Captus Press Inc, 2019) and has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in the cases of Michel v Graydon, 2020 SCC 24 and Colucci v Colucci, 2021 SCC 24, both involving claims of historic child support. Together with her friend and colleague Lynda Collins, she stretched the legal boundaries of family by becoming legal co-mothers of their son, Elaan, though they are not in a conjugal relationship.

Prof Bakht served as the English Language Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (2014-2020). She has assisted in Canadian judicial education on issues of religion, gender, culture, anti-oppression, equality and diversity. Her legal activism includes involvement with the National Association of Women and the Law and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). She was named one of the top 50 people in city by Ottawa Life Magazine (2009), received a Femmy Award by International Women’s Day Ottawa for being a thought leader in the National Capital Region (2017) and received the South Asian Bar Association’s Legal Excellence Award (2019). She was appointed to the Order of Ottawa in 2022.

Prof Bakht is also an award-winning dancer and choreographer, trained in Bharata Natyam and specializing in Indian contemporary dance. Relying on a hybridity of forms, her work looks curiously at the ordinary, discovers beauty in unusual places and explores the themes of marginalization and resistance. She is the recipient of many accolades including twice nominated for Dora Awards for outstanding choreography (2003 and 2010), the K.M. Hunter Artist Award (2008), finalist for the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award finalist (2018) and a finalist for the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize (2021). Her dances have been the subject of two films by Mouvement Perpétuel (mouvementperpetuel.net). She is artist-in-residence at the Ottawa Dance Directive (Ottawa Dance Directive / Centre de danse contemporaine (odd-cdc.org).

Brigidda Bell

English book review editor for Sciences religieuses / Studies in Religion

Brigidda Zapata (Bell) is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Moravian Theological Seminary, Moravian University. She received her PhD from the Dept. for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto in 2022. Her research examines early Christian prophets and ritual experts of the Roman Empire, and how they establish credibility for their audiences, focusing particularly on the apostle Paul. Her work engages social history and theories of affect and embodiment, and she is co-editor of the volume Ominous Times: Anticipating Cataclysm in Early Judaism and Christianity (De Gruyter 2025). Her current book project is entitled False Prophets: Rethinking Authority in Earliest Christianity.

Loïc Bizeul

Student Representative

Loïc Bizeul est candidat au doctorat au Centre d’études du religieux contemporain de l’Université de Sherbrooke. Il est le représentant étudiant de la Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses.  Il travaille comme coordonnateur de la Chaire de recherche Droit, religion et laïcité. 

Titulaire d’un master en sciences des religions et sociétés de l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, il a effectué un stage à la Chaire de recherche Droit, religion et laïcité, sous la supervision du Professeur David Koussens. Son séjour lui a permis de mener une enquête de terrain et une série d’entrevues semi-directives auprès de paroissiens de l’Église Saint-Pierre-Apôtre de Montréal. Cette enquête s’est inscrite dans la préparation de son mémoire sur la place des homosexuels dans l’Église catholique. Dans la foulée de ce stage, en janvier 2019, Loïc a commencé un doctorat en Études du religieux contemporain à l’Université de Sherbrooke. Sa thématique de recherche, portant toujours autour du catholicisme et de l’homosexualité, prolonge les réflexions de son mémoire en étudiant le parcours de prêtres catholiques homosexuels en contexte québécois. Il a obtenu en juin 2022 une Bourse de doctorat en recherche (B2Z) du FRQSC (Fonds de recherche Société et culture du Québec) d’une valeur de 35 000$.  

Par ailleurs, Loïc est membre étudiant du CRIDAQ et du SoDRUS. Il est également l’idéateur et l’animateur du podcast Religio, le podcast qui explore le religieux. Il anime le balado Fil d’actualité, un balado du CRIDAQ. Il a travaillé également sur le comité de direction du REMDUS (Regroupement des étudiants de maîtrise et doctorat de l’Université de Sherbrooke) en tant que Directeur aux services et finances d’août 2021 à mai 2023. Il a également été de mars 2020 à août 2021 président de l’ARCTUS, l’Association étudiante pour l’Étude du Religieux Contemporain et la Théologie de l’Université de Sherbrooke.

Zeba Crook

English editor for Studies in Religion / Sciences religieuses

Zeba Crook did his MA at UBC with Dietmar Neufeld (1997) and his PhD at the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto (2003) with John Kloppenborg. He’s a Full Professor at Carleton University (the one in Ottawa, not the college in Minnesota!). Zeba Crook publishes in social-scientific approaches to Judean and Christian writings, situating in the ancient Mediterranean social world, particularly on honor and shame, collectivism, patronage, friendship, theories of exchange, as well as in synoptic problem, memory theory, Jesus in modern fiction, religious studies, cultural studies. He’s currently writing an Introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for OUP, and editing a collection of primary texts from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East that relate to their social values (honor, economy, dress, space, patronage, and so on) to be published by Eerdmans.

Carlton University, Religion department
2a43 Paterson Hall
Ottawa, ON
K1S 4Y7
Canada

Frédéric Dejean

SQÉR President

Frédéric Dejean est professeur agrégé au Département de sciences des religions de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Formé en géographie humaine, en études urbaines et en sociologie, ses recherches sont orientées dans deux directions : le « zonage religieux » en contexte urbain montréalais et le protestantisme évangélique, en particulier les « Églises urbaines ».

Diana Dimitrova

Codirector of book series "Matière à pensée"

Diana Dimitrova is Professor of Hinduism and South Asian religions at the University of Montreal. She obtained her Ph.D. in Modern and Classical South Asian Studies, and English philology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Prior to joining the University of Montreal, she held several academic positions in the United States, Canada and Germany. She is the author of Hinduism and Hindi Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Gender, Religion and Modern Hindu Drama (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008; and Western Tradition and Naturalistic Hindi Theatre (Peter Lang, 2004).  She is also the editor of Divinizing in South Asian Traditions (Routledge, 2018, with Tatiana Oranskaia); Imagining ‘Indianness:’ Cultural Identity and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; paperback 2019, with Thomas de Bruijn); The Other in South Asian Religions, Literatures and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness (Routledge, 2014; paperback 2017); and Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Her current research interests deal with Hindu devotional and reform traditions, such as Radhasoami, body in South Asian religions, and Bollywood film.

Professor of Hinduism and South Asian traditions/Professeure titulaire d’hindouisme et des traditions d’Asie du Sud
Institute of Religious Studies/Institut d’études religieuses

Sébastien Doane

ACÉBAC President

Sébastien Doane est professeur agrégé à la Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses de l’Université Laval. Il est membre du comité d’organisation du RRENAB (Réseau de recherche en narrativité et Bible). À la SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), il est co-chair de l’unité The Bible and Animal Studies et membre du comité de direction de l’unité Literature, Theory and the Bible. Ses recherches portent sur divers aspects de l’interprétation biblique, notamment en conversation avec les études des masculinités ou avec les humanités environnementales. Son dernier livre: Reading the Bible amid the Environmental Crisis: Interdisciplinary Insights to Ecological Hermeneutics, Lexington Books, 2024 est le fruit de recherches financer par le CRSH. Il est directeur de la nouvelle collection The Bible and Ecologie chez Routledge.

Angelo Cardita

Codirector of book series "Matière à pensée"

Professeur titulaire – théologie sacramentaire, liturgie et études rituelles à la Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval.

2006: Doctorat en théologie systématique, spécialisation en théologie sacramentaire (Faculté de théologie de L’Athénée pontifical Saint-Anselme, Rome)
2001: Maîtrise – Licence canonique – en liturgie (Institut supérieur de liturgie de Barcelone)
1999: Baccalauréat canonique – Licence civile – en théologie (Faculté de théologie de l’Université Catholique Portugaise, Porto)

Xavier Gravend-Tirole

French editor, Sciences Religieuses / Studies in Religion

Enfant de Montréal parti sur les grandes routes du monde, Xavier Gravend-Tirole a exploré pendant 1 an et demi les grands sites religieux du monde après avoir complété un premier BA en philosophie et sciences religieuses à l’université McGill. Théologien chrétien enrichi par sa fréquentation d’autres traditions spirituelles, il a poursuivi sa réflexion par un baccalauréat canonique de théologie à l’institut catholique de Paris et une maîtrise à Harvard Divinity School. Boursier (2008) de la prestigieuse Fondation Trudeau, il a effectué son doctorat en cotutelle entre les universités de Montréal et Lausanne.

Ses recherches font toujours dialoguer la théorie et la pratique. Les thèmes de son travail ont porté, pendant le doctorat, sur les brassages du croire en général, et l’indianisation du christianisme dans le sous-continent indien en particulier. Les questions identitaires et de vivre-ensemble demeurent majeures dans ses recherches. Ancien aumônier (intervenant en soin spirituel) et membre fondateur du réseau Théorias, son travail explore aujourd’hui la théorisation du spirituel, les questions de bien-être et de santé spirituelle. Écothéologien et praticien en écopsychologie, un autre pan de ses recherches examine les articulations entre l’écologie, la psyché et la spiritualité.

Nicholas Olkovich

CTS President

Associate Professor, Marie Anne Blondin Chair in Catholic Theology, St. Mark’s College

Nicholas Olkovich comes to Vancouver from the Faculty of Theology, University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto where he taught and served as Director of Field Education and Pastoral Formation from 2015-2017. During his MDiv and PhD programs, he served as parish catechist and RCIA Director at a large parish in Toronto’s west-end.

Nick teaches in the areas of foundational, systematic and pastoral theology. His ongoing research focuses primarily on the relationship between ethics, politics and religion in democratic contexts and on a variety of issues in theological anthropology, ecclesiology, and foundational theology. His teaching and research is strongly influenced by the work of Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan.

Jean-Jacques Lavoie

French book review editor for Sciences religieuses / Studies in Religion

Jean-Jacques Lavoie est professeur au Département de sciences des religions de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Ses domaines d’expertise sont la Bible, les Judaïsmes, les Christianisme, Religion et mort et les Méthodes et herméneutique en exégèse des textes anciens.

Alison R. Marshall

CSSR President

Dr. Alison R. Marshall is professor of religion at Brandon University, former program co-chair of the AAR Religion and Migration Unit, former two term program co-chair of the CSSR, and cultural consultant having spent a year in 2021 to help shape key cultural elements on the Pixar/Disney film “Turning Red” set in Toronto’s Chinatown.  Marshall is the author of three monographs in the field of Asian religion and history including The Way of the Bachelor: Early Chinese Settlement in Manitoba (2011) Winner of the 2015 Canadian Society for the Study of Religion Book Prize and the Manitoba Day Award, and Cultivating Connections:  The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada (2014) both with University of British Columbia Press.  Her third monograph, Bayanihan and Belonging: Filipinos and Religion in Canada (University of Toronto Press) written in 2018, examines the history and cultures of migrants from the Philippines from 1880 to 2017.  Marshall explores the topic of religion and migration in the 2022 Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Migration with lead author Rubina Ramji.  2025 will see the release of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religious Ecstasy with Marshall as lead author, alongside Rubina Ramji and Michael Wilkinson.  Marshall is currently working on her fourth monograph, a history of KMT Culture in Canada and globally.

Norman Ravvin

ACJS President

Norman Ravvin teaches in the Department of Religions and Cultures and Concordia University, in Montreal, where he was Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies for thirteen years.  His recent memoir is Who Gets In: An Immigration Story (University of Regina Press).  His novel of Vancouver and Poland, published in 2019, is The Girl Who Stole Everything.  Recent work has focused on links between Jewish identity and prewar Poland, as well as on Holocaust Literature.  His published essays focus on Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Saul Bellow, Bruno Schulz, Chava Rosenfarb, Alice Munro and Philip Roth.  Some of these are in his collection of essays, A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory.  He is president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.

Erin M. Runions

CSBS President

Professor of Biblical History and Literature, and Religious Studies

Erin Runions’s research focuses on the Hebrew Bible and its reception history, with special attention to the influence of the Bible on contemporary culture and politics. In her work, she demonstrates the cumulative effect of biblical reception on sexuality, biopolitics, racialization, governance, war, torture and U.S. imperialism. Her publications include, The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty (2014); How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film (2003); Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah (2001).

Runions has also been an activist for many years, working on issues of police brutality and prison injustice, globalization, antiwar activism, feminist and queer organizing. She currently helps facilitate a writing workshop inside a women’s prison and is working on issues of environmental justice in the nearby city of Pomona.

Mona Tokarek LaFosse

CSPS Representative

Mona Tokarek LaFosse is the Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Emmanuel College at Victoria College in the University of Toronto and President of the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies/Association canadienne des études patristiques. She completed a PhD in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto (2011) as well as an MA in Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her book Honouring Age: The Social Dynamics of Age Structure in 1 Timothy (2024) is part of the CCSR sponsored series Studies in Christianity and Judaism, published by McGill Queen’s University Press. Her research focuses on age structure, aging and gender, and intergenerational relationships in the ancient Mediterranean and in early Christianity—particularly in 1 Timothy and the Apostolic Fathers—using a social-scientific lens. Her teaching includes topics in the realm of Bible (obviously), exegesis, age, apocalypticism, Koine Greek, Jesus (of course), performance criticism, storytelling, and zombies.

Nadia Elena Vacaru

SCT Representative

Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme

Book Series Editor, "Advancing Studies in Religion"