Alexis Artaud de la Ferriere

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

My research lies at the intersection of the sociology of religion, social theory, and the study of personal and cultural change. A central strand of my current work concerns metanoia: how individuals undergo and sustain significant transformations in identity, belief, values, and ways of life, and how the social and institutional conditions of contemporary society enable or inhibit such change. This includes work on religious conversion and commitment, secularisation and religious change, and the effects of modern individualism, social acceleration, and changing forms of community and belonging.

Much of my research uses Catholicism as a lens through which to examine these broader questions. I have written on dynamics of change within the Catholic Church in France and the Maghrib, mission and empire, religion and immigration, post-colonial expressions of Catholicism, and the relationship between religious institutions and secular civil society. I also maintain interests in Church–State relations, laïcité, freedom of religion and belief, and the relationship between social theory and theology.

I am the editor for the open-science publication Proceedings of the Center for Metanoia Studies and I sit on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Social Sciences and Missions. I am also a member of the G20 Interfaith Forum's Working Group on Freedom of Religion and Belief, 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

• Metanoia, conversion, and personal transformation

• 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