Alexis Artaud de la Ferriere

I am a Lecturer in Sociology here at Royal Holloway and an Associate Researcher at the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (EPHE/CNRS) in Paris.

I am the President of the Association Française de Sciences Sociales des Religions and 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.

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 am currently involved in two projects looking at decision-making and truth-seeking in the Catholic Church. I am co-Investigator and lead for social sciences for the Listening Practices in Global Catholicism Project. This project brings together theological and social science perspectives to investigate the notion of spiritual listening within the Catholic tradition. I am also engaged in a project studying the notion of “synodality” in the Catholic Church, and the role of sociology and social theory in ecclesial consultation processes and decision-making.

I host a podcast called Audimus about spiritual listening in the Catholic Church.

Office hours

• 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
• Research Methods for Social Scientists