Who We Are
Our
Story
The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies was established in 2010 through a grant from the Evans/Glasscock Digital Humanities Project at Texas A&M University and brought to fruition with the generous assistance of TAMU's Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture. The goal of this project is to create online resource center for researchers, students and those interested in investigating the intersection of new media, religion and digital culture.
Over the past decade and a half the study of religion online has become a growing field of inquiry. Much attention was given to the novel uses of the internet by religious users and groups, such as those seen in New Religious Movements online where once fringe or secretive religious groups were given a public platform making them more visible. Early research also focused on how mainstream religions, such as Christianity and Islam, were appropriating to new media technologies or critiquing internet use and with a particular focus on the United states and Western Europe. However, as the internet has become increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, researchers from a variety of disciplines have begun to take notice of the rise of religion online and consider the offline implications of online social and religious practices.
The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies is set-up as a space where people can share resources they have found valuable in their research, have themselves written, and learn about the diversity of work being done in a variety of disciplines related to this exciting area of study. The Network provides features that allow you to explore the latest research as well as previous foundational studies to help contextualize your own studies of these topics, help refine your research questions. Members are able to key interactive features, such as the online bibliography, scholar’s index and news section. Together we hope the Network will help to more fully map the current boundaries of this interdisciplinary conversation so we can learn the extent to which new media technologies are affecting religious community, identity and rituals in a globalized society.
An overview of the NMRDC vision and opportunities it seeks to offer can also be found at: http://vimeo.com/44708108
Network Director
Heidi A Campbell, Texas A&M University (USA)
Heidi Campbell is Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University where she teaches in the areas of new media, popular culture and religion. She has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in Computer-Mediated Communication & Practical Theology. Since the mid-1990s she has studied religion on the Internet and the influence of information communication technologies on religious communities. Her work has appeared in Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Contemporary Religion, New Media and Society, andThe Information Society and booksReligion Online (Dawson & Cowan, Routledge 2004) and The Blackwell Internet Handbook (Consalvo & Ess, Blackwells 2011). She is author of Exploring Religious Community Online (Peter Lang 2005), When Religion Meets New Media (Routledge 2010), Networked Theology (Baker Academic 2016),co-editor of A Science and Religion Primer (Baker Academic 2009) and editor of Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media World (Routledge, 2013), Playing Games with Religion (Indian Univ Press, 2014) and Digital Judaism (Routledge, 2015) She has been quoted as an expert on religion and the internet in over 100 news outlets including the Houston Chronicle,LA Times, Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Australian ABC Radio and on the BBC World Service.
Associate Director
Alessandra Vitullo, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)
Alessandra Vitullo is research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome, where she teaches Sociology of Communication and Sociology of Migration. She is the scientific coordinator of the Religions and Social Change Lab at Sapienza University. She was a researcher in several universities and research centers, such as Texas A&M University, KU Leuven, Uppsala University, "Bicocca" University of Milan, and the Bruno Kessler Foundation. Her latest book The Religionautes: Studying Homo Religiosus in the Time Of the Web, was published in Italian in 2021.
Assistant Director
Giulia Evolvi, University of Bologna (Italy)
Giulia Evolvi is a Marie Skłodowska Curie fellow at the University of Bologna, Italy, where she conducts the project MERGE on the topic of digital media, Catholic social movements, and gender. During the project, Giulia will also be a visiting scholar at the Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, U.S., where she obtained her PhD studying religious blogs. Previously, Giulia also worked as lecturer in Media and Communication at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and as postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, where she established a research area in religion and media.
Advisory Board
Advisory board members support and guide the work of the network by serving a 3 year term.
Member
John Borchert
Dr. John Borchert is the Associate Director of the Network for the Cultural Study of Videogaming and Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro . He is interested in how religious practices and media technologies intersect across American religious histories, particularly their impact on embodiment and death. John has published work on digital religion and pedagogy and digital death practices and is currently under contract for two book projects: a textbook on religion and videogames and a manuscript on posthumanism, video games and death ritual. He is Co-Chair of the Death Dying and Beyond Unit of the American Academy of Religion, and serves on the board of the gamevironments, the only journal on religion and video gaming.
Member
Erica Baffelli
Erica Baffelli is Professor of Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester (UK). She is interested in religion in contemporary Japan, with a focus on groups founded from the 1970s onwards. Her recent research projects focused on religion in contemporary Japan, religion and media, new and minority religions, religion, gender and violence, and Buddhism and emotions. She currently PI on a Leverhulme Research Project on "Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities" (2023-2027). She is co-editor, with Michael Stausberg and Alexander Van Der Haven, of the open access publication Religious Minorities Online (De Gruyter).
Member
Pauline Cheong
Pauline Hope Cheong (Ph.D. Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California) is (Full) Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, and the Zebulon Pearce Distinguished Teacher of the Social Sciences, at Arizona State University. Her award-winning research on communication technologies and culture includes examining religious knowledge and authority, digital access and inequalities, and emerging technologies including Big Data, Internet of Things & Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) perceptions, practices, and policy. She has co-led funded collaborative and global research projects, with her work in more than 100 articles and books. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Digital Religion.
Member
Damian Guzek
Damian Guzek is an associate professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, the PI of the
project ‘Papal Authority Transformed by Changes in Communication’ (Polish NCN), and Polish coordinator of the ‘T4ERI’ Horizon 2020 project. He has been involved in several research projects in digital communication, religion, and politics. After a doctorate in Katowice, he conducted his Visby post-doc scholarship at Uppsala University and a research internship at the University of Edinburgh. He was also a RA for ‘Illiberal Turn’ project at Loughborough University, and visiting fellow at Keele University and Masaryk University. His research is driven by questions related to media consumption and digital media, religions, and political communication.
Member
Rita Marchetti
Rita Marchetti is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Perugia (Italy), where she teaches courses in “Sociology of Digital Media” and “Media and Political System in the Digital Age”. Her main research interests are digital religion, political communication and the relationship between media and corruption. Her work has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including
Social Media + Society, Journal of Religion in Europe, The International Journal of Press Politics, European Journal of Communication, Journalism, Journalism Practice, Journalism Studies, and The Communication Review.
Member
Carlo Nardella
Carlo Nardella is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy. His research is primarily concerned with issues of cultural change, with particular attention to the interrelationships between religion and marketing, the transformations in the use of religious symbols, and the relationship between Catholicism and the media. He has published, among other things, the first major study on religion and advertising in Italy. Since September 2023, he has been serving as the Principal Investigator for a research project titled “Religion in Public: Forms and Dynamics of Religious Publicization in Italy” funded by Italy’s Ministry of University and Research (MURPRIN). Recipient of the British Sociological Association’s Peter B. Clarke Memorial Prize and nominee for the Harvard Society of Fellows, Nardella was visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture.
Member
Kerstin Radde Antweiler
Kerstin Radde-Antweiler is professor for the research area "Literatures and Media of Religions" at the Institute for Religious Studies and Religious Education at the University of Bremen, Germany.
Her research focuses on mediatized religion, mediatization theory, Pagan and Christian traditions and Ritual Studies.
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Member
Ruth Tsuria
Ruth Tsuria is an Associate Professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Communication, Media, and the Arts. Her research, which investigates the intersection of digital media, culture, and feminism, has been published in various prestigious academic outlets, such as International Journal of Communication and Social Media + Society. She is the recipient of The Inaugural Digital Religion Research Award for her contributions to the field of Digital Religion, and the 2023 Researcher of The Year Award for her impressive publication record which includes 23 articles and book chapters, and two edited books. She is currently working on her first book: Keeping Women in their (digital) Place: Exploring Jewish Online Discourse on Gender and Sexuality (Penn State University Press). In addition, Tsuria is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Religion, Media, and Digital Culture (LINK).
Member
Xenia Zeiler
Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the Department of Cultures, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. Closely related to and supporting this are her other major research areas: In order to understand how digital spaces such as social media or video games, and more traditional media formats such as film or TV, shape and are shaped by various actors, she researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes.