Cooperations

Dr. Srdjan Sremac

Srdjan Sremac is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the co-director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion at the same university. He is also a research fellow and a member of the management team at the PACS (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

He has authored or co-edited 16 books and over 60 journal articles and book chapters. He also serves as the managing editor of Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan). His primary research focuses on lived religion from both theoretical and ethnographic perspectives, as well as theory and method in the study of religion. His interdisciplinary interests focus on a wide range of topics, including religion and sexuality, war-related trauma, religion and extreme violence, material culture/religion, religion and heritage, visual ethnography, and post-conflict reconciliation studies.

Dr. Katja Tolstoja

Dr Katja Tolstoja is the founder and director of the Institute for the Academic Study of Eastern Christianity (INaSEC), and is Associate Professor in Systematic Theology at the Vrije Universtiteit, Amsterdam. She specializes in the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church and the impact of the Soviet legacy on post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy. As NWO-Veni laureate (2009-2012) she studied the transformation and (re-)invention of Orthodox theology and practice in Russia and Ukraine. She is currently working to initiate Theology after Gulag as a model for coming to terms with the traumatic Soviet past.

Dr. Robert Beckford

Dr Robert Beckford is the Climate and Social Justice professor at the University of Winchester and professor of Black Theology at the Queen’s Ecumenical Foundation and the Vrije Universiteit. In addition, Beckford is a scholar-activist researching the entanglements of faith and racial justice in the Black Atlantic through diverse media texts.

He has written a dozen books that triangulate African Diaspora theology, Black British cultural studies and black radicalism. Robert’s latest book, “Decolonizing Gospel Music: A Radical Praxis,” is published by Bloomsbury in 2023. The book is an action-reflection study of Robert’s debut contemporary gospel album, The Jamaican Bible Remix. (See https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/religion-philosophy-and-ethics/research/jamaican-bible-remix.aspx) Beckford is also a British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA), award-winning documentary filmmaker, having presented over twenty documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. Beckford’s current film project, ‘Redeeming Slavery,’ is an independent documentary film on British Christianity’s obfuscation of its intellectual and financial investment in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (2021)

Rev. Prof. Dr. David P. Gushee

Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, Chair of Christian Social Ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is also the elected past-president of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics. Dr. Gushee is the author or editor of 29 books, including the bestsellers Kingdom Ethics and Changing Our Mind. His other most notable works are Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies, After Evangelicalism, and most recently, The Moral Teachings of Jesus. He lectures and consults globally, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading Christian moral thinkers. Gushee and his wife, Jeanie, live in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at here.

Dion A. Forster – D.Th (SA); Ph.D (Radboud)

Dion Forster is a Professor of Public Theology in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He also serves as an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University and at Wesley House, Cambridge University. Dion’s research focusses on the intersections of faith and public life viewed through the intersectional lenses of social and political identities. He holds two PhD’s, one in Systematic Theology (2006) and another in New Testament Studies (2017). His most recent books are ‘African Public Theology’ (Langham, 2020), ‘The (im)possibility of forgiveness?’ (Wipf & Stock, 2019), and ‘Reconciliation, Religion and Violence in Africa’ (African SUN Media, 2020).

Schuyler Pals

Schuyler is the website administrator for the ACRPJ Schuyler is from the United States, has a B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies, a M.A. in Theology and Religious Studies: Peace, Trauma, and Religion from Vrije Universiteit, and a Juris Doctorate from The University of Iowa College of Law.

Some of the organizations Schuyler has worked with are Musahala in Jerusalem, I-Dare for Sustainable Development in Amman, Jordan, and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Zagreb, Croatia