The Committee is responsible for the day-to-day running of the BASR.
Dr Paul-François Tremlett
President
paul-francois.tremlett@open.ac.uk
Paul-François Tremlett is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University. His research interests include classical and contemporary anthropological and sociological theories of religion and the broad constitution of religion as a site of study in societies experiencing rapid social change. He is currently co-leading a research project on democracy, disinformation and religion and a second one on religious literacies. He co-edits the Bloomsbury Series ‘Religion, Space and Place’.
Dr Suzanne Owen
Secretary
Suzanne is Reader in Religious Studies at Leeds Trinity University. Her research interests are in indigenous and pagan studies, Newfoundland studies and on the academic study of religion. To revitalise, she walks in the Yorkshire Dales and does creative writing.
Dr Aled Thomas
Treasurer
Aled is a Teaching Fellow in the Study of Religion at the University of Leeds. His research interests include fluid forms of contemporary religion, ‘cultic’ discourses, and theory and methods in the study of religion. His work places an emphasis on religion as an aspect of everyday life. Aled is the author of Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion (Bloomsbury 2021) and co-editor of ‘Cult’ Rhetoric in the 21st Century: Deconstructing the Study of New Religious Movements (Bloomsbury 2024). He is also a member of the management committee of Inform (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements).
Dr Stefanie Sinclair
Teaching and Learning Representative
Steffi is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, with special interests in religion and identity as well as creativity and multisensory learning and assessment. She is the founding Director of FASSTEST, a centre supporting innovation and scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at the OU’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. When she’s not working, she likes spending time with family & friends, going for walks, reading, watching films and swimming.
Prof Joseph Webster
Committee Member
Joe is Professor of the Anthropology of Religion within the Cambridge Divinity Faculty and Fellow in Anthropology at Downing College. A Social Anthropologist by training, Joe’s research focuses on Protestant fundamentalism and millenarianism in Scotland and Northern Ireland, including ethnographic studies of the Exclusive Brethren, the Orange Order, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Joe also advises the Scottish Government on policy issues related to sectarianism and hate crime.
Dr Theodora Wildcroft
Bulletin Editor and Committee Member
Theo Wildcroft, PhD is a yoga teacher-trainer, writer and scholar who is interested in the democratization of yoga post-lineage, somatic literacy, meaning-making and the counter-culture. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Dharmic Worldviews at the University of Chester, Fellow of the HEA, former Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, editor of the BASR Bulletin, an honorary member of the British Wheel of Yoga, member of the IAYT, and a continuing professional development trainer and consultant for Yoga Alliance (E-RYT® 500, YACEP®). She is the author of Post-lineage yoga: from guru to #metoo, and co-editor of The Yoga Teachers’ Survival Guide and Yoga Studies in Five Minutes.
Susie Triffitt
PGR Representative
Susie is a third year PhD candidate at the Divinity faculty (University of Cambridge) undertaking an interdisciplinary project across Anthropology and Theology. Susie has just finished fieldwork with British Evangelicals in Bradford. With Joseph Webster, she is the co-founder of the Cambridge Anthropology-Theology (CAT) Network, a global interdisciplinary platform facilitating conversation across these subjects online.
Vishal Sangu
PGR Representative
Vishal is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at The Open University. His research looks at British Sikh religious identity and explores contemporary Sikh narratives of decolonisation. Vishal’s research looks at how and why contemporary Sikhs are actively “decolonising” their identity. His research is poised to make an important theoretical contribution to pushing Religious Studies to incorporate more fully the self-understandings of non-Abrahamic frameworks. As well as addressing the government and media presentations of Sikhi in Britain and India, where there is targeting of Sikh activists as troublemakers, Vishal’s research is situated to study the Sikh community in their own articulation of identity. He is also a member of the British Association for South Asian Studies. Outside of research, Vishal enjoys going on walks and hikes, meditation, and playing football.
British Association for the Study of Religions 