MARK JUERGENSMEYER/

MARK JUERGENSMEYER is distinguished professor emeritus of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He is a pioneer in global studies and writes on global religion, religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics. He was the founding director of the global studies program (now a department) at UCSB and the founding director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He has published more than three hundred articles and thirty books, including recently When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends (University of California Press 2022) and God at War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2020). His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, revised 4th edition 2017), is based on case studies and conversations with religious activists around the world–including militants in ISIS, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United States–and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. An early version of Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State (University of California Press, 2008) was named by the New York Times as a notable book of the year. His book on conflict resolution, Gandhi’s Way (University of California Press, Updated Edition, 2005), was selected as Community Book of the Year at the University of California, Davis.

Juergensmeyer’s edited books include Rethinking Secularism with Craig Calhoun and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford University Press, 2011), Religion in Global Civil Society (Oxford University Press 2005), The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions (Oxford University Press 2006), The Oxford Handbook of Global Studies co-edited with Manfred Steger and Saskia Sassen (Oxford 2018), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence with Michael Jerryson and Margo Kitts (Oxford University Press 2013) and an abridged version, Violence in the World ‘s Religious Traditions  (Oxford University Press, 2017), the Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, co-edited with Margo Kitts (Princeton University Press. 2011), Entering Religious Minds: The Social Study of Worldviews, co-edited with Mona Kanwal Sheikh (Routledge, 2020) and Religious Othering: Global Dimension (co-edited with Kathleen Moore and Dominic Sachsenmaier). He has co-edited The Encyclopedia of Global Religions with Wade Clark Roof and The Encyclopedia of Global Studies with Helmut Anheier and Victor Faessel (both published by Sage in 2012). A textbook, Thinking Globally was published by the University of California Press in 2014.

Juergensmeyer was elected President of the American Academy of Religion, and chaired the working group on Religion, Secularism, and International Affairs for the Social Science Research Council in New York City. He has received research fellowships from the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the 2003 recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for contributions to the study of religion, and is the 2004 recipient of the Silver Award of the Queen Sofia Center for the Study of Violence in Spain. He received Honorary Doctorates from Lehigh University (2004), Roskilde University in Denmark (2010) and Dayalbagh Educational Institute in India (2021); he received a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006 and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the religion and international relations section of the International Studies Association in 2019. Since the events of September 11 he has been a frequent commentator in the news media, including CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC, NPR, Fox News, ABC’s Politically Incorrect, and CNBC’s Dennis Miller Show.