Alexis Artaud de la Ferriere

I am Lecturer in Sociology here at Royal Holloway, Associate Researcher at the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (EPHE/CNRS) in Paris, and Co-Director of the Center for Metanoia Studies.

My research focuses on the relationship between religion, culture, and politics. I have written on dynamics of change within the Catholic Church in France and in the Maghrib, mission and empire, religion and immigration, post-colonial expressions of Catholicism, and the exchange of ideas between the Catholic Church and secular civil society. I am also interested in Church-State relations, laïcité, freedom of religion and belief, secularisation theory, and the conflictual relationship between social theory and theology.

I sit on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Social Sciences and Missions. I am also a member of the Panel of Experts for the International Religious Liberty Association and a member of the Council of Experts for the International Association for the Defence of Religious Freedom. I used to be the President of the Association Française de Sciences Sociales des Religions.

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• PhD, Cambridge

• MPhil, Cambridge

• BA (Hons), Sheffield

Current PhD students

• Jérémy Woloszyn, Catholicism and collective identities among Poles in Britain

• Church-state relations: secularisation, laïcité, freedom of religion and belief

• Catholicism

• Religion and politics in contemporary French society

• Christianity in North Africa

• Migration and religion

• Faith-based NGO's

• Sociology of Religion

• Telling Stories: Narrative and Community-Building in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern World

• Research Methods for Social Scientists