Faculty
Meet our outstanding and diverse faculty members in the Department.
Department Chair
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Naftali Cohn- Professor, Religions and Cultures
- Chair, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Ritual theory, Jewish ritual in film and television,early Judaism, Mishnah, Rabbinic literature, ancient Jewish ritual, narrative theory, feminist theory, affect theory
Full-time faculty
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Sowparnika Balaswaminathan- Assistant Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Heritage & Museums, Art & Craft, Anthropology of Religion, South Asia, Caste, Postcoloniality, Ethics, Aesthetics, Labour, Gender & Sexuality -
Lynda Clarke
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Shiism, Sunni-Shiite relations,Women and Islam,Islamic Law, Islam in the West -
Miranda Crowdus- Associate Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Alternative Judaism(s), Jewish Liturgy, Jewish Popular Culture, Ethnomusicology, Musicology, Cultural Studies, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sustainability, Ethnography, Critical Gender Studies, Religious Phenomenology, Practice as Research -
Carly Daniel-Hughes- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Women, Gender and Sexuality in Religious Studies; Queer Theory and Cultural Studies; Feminist Theory; History of Christianity; Early Christianity; Roman Empire -
J.F. Marc des Jardins- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Tibetan and Chinese religions; Tibetan Bon religion, philosophy, practices and history; Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and popular cults; Tibetan and Chinese Tantric ritual studies; Chinese Daoism and Popular Cults along the Sino-Tibetan frontiers; History of China, Tibet and Central Asia. -
Lorenzo DiTommaso- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Apocalypticism: Ancient to Contemporary Apocalypticism and Popular Culture and Media Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Mediaeval Manuscripts and Manuscript Study -
Richard Foltz- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Iranian History, Religions of Iran, Zoroastrianism, Kurdish Religion, Central Asian history, Tajiks, Ossetia, Caucasus -
Leslie Orr- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Research areas: Religious & social history of medieval Tamil Nadu; women in pre-colonial India; temple architecture & epigraphy; interactions among and sectarianism in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism -
Norman Ravvin- Past Chair, Canadian Jewish Studies, Religions and Cultures
Status: ProfessorResearch areas: Canadian Jewish Studies, North American Literature, Holocaust Studies, Eastern Europe, Yiddish literature, Creative Writing
Affiliates
Afra Jalabi
- Affiliate Assistant Professor at Concordia University, and member of the board at the Metta Center for Nonviolence in California
Research areas: She was a weekly columnist in the Arab press for about 20 years and produced hundreds of articles and columns and was also member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law and Religion at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her interests revolve around dialogue, comparative religion, and nonviolence. In the last 10 years she helped develop curriculum on strategic peace-building, ethics of nonviolence, and conflict resolution at George Mason University and has worked with different NGOs.
Nina Mazhjoo
- Affiliate Assistant Professor at Concordia University, Research Associate at Wroclaw University
Research areas: Foreign cults of the Roman Empire (especially Mithraism), imperialism, colonialism, and identity in the ancient world, interdisciplinary and theoretical approaches to the historiography of religions.
Susan Palmer
- Affiliate Professor at Concordia University, former Affiliate Member at McGill’s School of Religious Studies
Research areas: Her research on New Religious Movements has supported by seven grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. Palmer writes articles for the Human Rights magazine, Bitter Winter, and for international religious freedom groups (e.g. FOREF in Austria, HRWF in Belgium). She is the author of fifteen sociological studies of new religions.
Michael Sells
- (Emeritus) Professor of Islamic literature and history and comparative literature at University of Chicago
Research areas: Qur’anic studies, classical Arabic poetry, Sufi thought and literature, Mystical language, religion and violence.
Post-doctoral fellow
Fawaz Abdul Salam
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Fonds de recherche du Québec)
Research areas: Sociology of Islam; Material Religion; Heritage Studies; Religious Pluralism; Ottoman Architecture and Urbanism; Modern Turkey; Muslim Heritage in North America; Middle East
Professor Emeritus
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Norma Baumel Joseph- Associate Director, Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
Status: ProfessorResearch areas: Religion and gender, Judaism, food studies, Jewish law and gender, Canadian Jewish studies
Distinguished Professors Emeriti
Frederick Bird
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Research Professor at the University of Waterloo and Graduate Officer for the M.A. in Political Science
Research areas: International development and business; the practices of global ethics; the political economy of global poverty; comparative ethics; Max Weber.
Michel Despland
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Michel Despland retired on May 31, 2011 after more than 45 years of teaching. He passed peacefully on July 31, 2018. His commitment, wisdom, and presence will be missed by all. He was a pillar of this Department.
Jack Lightstone
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Research areas: The social and historical study of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period and within the context of Greco-Roman society and culture; understanding early rabbinic literature in its social and cultural contexts.
Michael Oppenheim
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Michael Oppenheim retired in 2016 after more than forty years as a professor in the Department.
Research areas: Jewish Studies, Philosophy of Religion, Psychology of Religion, and Feminism. With his retirement to Vancouver, BC, he has immersed himself in the task of understanding the histories and cultures of North America’s Indigenous peoples including studies of interconnection and interdependence of humans and nature, expansive views of personhood and kinship, the principle/law of reciprocity––designated here as gift-giving reciprocity, and the implicit critique of Western culture and society.
T.S. Rukmani
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus. T.S. Rukmani retired on June 30, 2012 after serving as Professor and Chair of Hindu Studies in the Department since 1996. Dr. Rukmani passed away peacefully in India on November 22, 2024.
Ira Robinson
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies where he taught for 42 years in the Department. He served as the Chair of the Department and Director of the Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies.
Research areas: Robinson has written, edited, and translated nineteen books on Jewish Studies published over seventy articles in journals such as Studies in Religion, Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, American Jewish Archives, Jewish Quarterly Review, Judaism, Modern Judaism, Canadian Ethnic Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies.
Sheila McDonough
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Research areas: The first woman Islamic scholar in Canada, she received an honorary doctorate at the spring 2002 convocation of Queen’s University. As an undergraduate at McGill, Dr. McDonough came under the influence of religion historian Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, and became the first female graduate student at McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies. She taught for three years at Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore, Pakistan, to gain experience in the Muslim world, and that experience shaped her academic interests and her interest in promoting the understanding of Islam.