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.

Nadia Elena Vacaru

SCT Representative

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

Diana Dimitrova

CSSR President and 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

Marc Dumas

Codirector of book series "Matière à pensée"

Marc Dumas a fait ses études à l’Université Laval (Québec) et son doctorat à l’Université Eberhard-Karls de Tübingen en Allemagne. Il est professeur de théologie depuis 1994 à l’Université de Sherbrooke. Spécialiste de l’œuvre et de la pensée du théologien philosophe germano-américain Paul Tillich, il s’intéresse à la notion d’expérience en théologie et au développement d’une théologie en expérience. Ces dernières années, le champ de la santé est devenu un nouveau contexte de réflexion. Il co-dirige depuis 2010 les Annales internationales de la recherche tillichienne (De Gruyter) et la collection Tillich Research (De Gruyter). Déjà à la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix, il s’était engagé dans l’équipe éditoriale de la revue Sciences Religieuses. Quelques années plus tard, il fut président de la Corporation canadienne des sciences religieuses. Le rayonnement des travaux d’érudition des chercheur-e-s lui importe, de sorte qu’il se réjouit de joindre en juin 2020 l’équipe de direction de la collection Matière à pensée (PUM).

Martha Milagros Acosta Valle

President of the ACÉBAC

Martha Milagros Acosta Valle is associate professor of Biblical Studies at Niagara University, Niagara Falls, USA.

Originally from Cuba, Acosta Valle studied journalism and linguistics at Havana University.  She later completed a Bachelor of Theology at Laval University in Quebec City, as well as a Bachelor of Education from the University of Ottawa. She obtained a master’s degree, a Th.D. and a Ph.D. from St. Paul University (Ottawa) and the University of Ottawa.

Acosta Valle’s doctoral work focused on identity and transformation in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.  In her current research and publications, she explores the ways in which narrative texts attempt to transform the reader.  She is also interested in the relationship between textual and oral tradition, as well as Christology in the context of early Christianity.

Jean-François Laniel

French editor, Sciences Religieuses / Studies in Religion

Jean-François Laniel est professeur adjoint à la Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses de l’Université Laval depuis janvier 2019. Il a complété un doctorat en sociologie à l’Université du Québec à Montréal en 2018, une maîtrise en sociologie à l’Université d’Ottawa en 2010 et un baccalauréat en sociologie et en science politique à l’Université d’Ottawa en 2007. Sa thèse de doctorat s’est méritée en 2019 le Prix du livre politique de l’Assemblée nationale décerné par la Fondation Jean-Charles-Bonenfant.

Ses recherches portent sur les liens entre la tradition et la modernité; entre la religion, la culture et le politique; entre le christianisme et le nationalisme; entre l’Église et l’État – au Québec, au Canada français et au sein des petites nations. Il cherche à comprendre comment s’instituent les sociétés sur la moyenne et la longue durée, à partir de matrices religieuses et politiques propres, à l’aide d’une approche socio-historique comparée. Ces dernières années, il s’est penché sur les enjeux du catholicisme culturel, de la gestion de la diversité, des modèles de laïcité, du nationalisme transfrontalier et du nationalisme éthique.

Il a effectué un postdoctorat au Department of Sociology de la University of Michigan (Ann Arbor – 2018), un séjour de recherche à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris – 2014), ainsi que des séjours d’études à la European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (Italie – 2015) et à la Central European University (Budapest – 2018). Il a notamment publié dans Nations and Nationalism, Social Compass, Sciences religieuses/Religious Studies, Sociologitcheski problemi, Recherches sociographiques, Études d’histoire religieuse et Voix et images.

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.

Mark Leuchter

CSBS Representative

Mark Leuchter (PhD, Univ. of Toronto, 2003) is Professor of Ancient Judaism and Hebrew Bible at Temple University in Philadelphia.  He has served as regional president of the Society of Biblical Literature (Mid-Atlantic Region) and currently serves as executive secretary for the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.  His favorite band is Rush.

Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme

Book Series Editor, "Advancing Studies in Religion"

Stéphanie Tremblay

President of the SQÉR

Stéphanie Tremblay is professor in the department of Religious Studies at UQAM since 2016. Her research projects, which frequently involve fieldwork, center on the following: 1) Laïcité, education, and the relationships with knowledges; 2) Religious imaginary and the transformations of cultural Catholicism; and 3) Beliefs and conspiracy theories.

She is the president of the Société québécoise pour l’étude de la religion (SQER), and collaborates regularly as a researcher for the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (CRIDAQ) and l’Équipe Recherche et Action sur les polarisations sociales (RAPS). The empirical nature of her academic works prompted her to develop collaborative efforts outside of the university, including with various cégeps in Montérégie.

Stéphanie wrote more than twenty peer-reviewed papers on her research interests, and published two monographs, Les écoles juive, musulmane et Steiner : pluralité des voies éducatives (PUQ, 2014), and École et religions : Genèse du nouveau pari québécois (Fides, 2010).

Sarah Rollens

English book review editor for Sciences religieuses / Studies in Religion

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Sarah E. Rollens is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. Prior to coming to Rhodes, she taught courses in Religious Studies at University of Toronto, University of North Carolina Wilmington, and University of Alabama. She received her PhD in the Study of Religion in 2013 from University of Toronto. Her dissertation, Framing Social Criticism in the Jesus Movement: The Ideological Project in the Sayings Gospel Q, was published in 2014 by Mohr Siebeck. Her current research project deals with violent imagery in early Christian texts. This research combines her broader interests in Christian origins, social theory, scribalism, identity formation, the ancient Mediterranean world, and the Synoptic gospels. Prof. Rollens has taught numerous courses in Religious Studies: Introduction to the New Testament; Introduction to Religious Studies; Historical Jesus; Jesus of Nazareth; Violence in Early Christianity; Religion and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean World; Popular Culture/Public Humanities; Jesus in the Early Christian Writings; Early Christians Gospels; and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She is currently teaching The Bible: Texts and Contexts (Life) and The Search for Values in Light of Western History and Religion (Search).

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.

Darren Dias

CTS President

Darren Dias is the Executive Director of the Toronto School of Theology and Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St Michael’s College.  His research areas include inter-religious relations, decolonialism and theological method.  He is the President of the Canadian Theological Society.

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.

Hernan Tesler-Mabé

ACJS's President

Hernan Tesler-Mabé is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Jewish Studies program at Huron University College, King’s College, and Western University. His research centers on modern Jewish culture across the Diaspora, with a focus on the intersection of art, culture, and identity. His first monograph – Mahler’s Forgotten Conductor: Heinz Unger and his Search for Jewish Meaning, 1895-1965 – was an exploration of a musician’s negotiation of his German Jewish identity and was awarded the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Best Biography. Dr. Tesler-Mabé is President of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.

Natasha Bakht

CASIM's 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).