Fiction, Invention and Hyper-reality

Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She trained as a medievalist and her PhD was published as Conversion among the Germanic Peoples (1998). She now specialises in contemporary religious trends (pilgrimage and tourism, modern Pagan religions, NRMs, and religion and popular culture). Her books include Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011) and (with Katharine Buljan) Anime, Religion, and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (2014). She has published widely in edited volumes and journals, and is the editor (with Christopher Hartney) of Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honour of Garry W. Trompf (2010) and (with Alex Norman) of Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (2012). Pavol Kosnác is an independent scholar based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has studied Religious Studies at Comenius University, where he obtained his BA and MA, and political philosophy, jurisprudence and European culture at the Collegium of Anton Neuwirt (both in Bratislava). Afterwards he moved to England to continue his studies at the University of Oxford, completing an MSt in Study of Religion. He held a six-month placement at INFORM in London, then travelled extensively working as a freelance analyst for British, Slovak and Asian think-tanks. He plans to start a PhD next year. His academic background is mostly in sociology of religion, history of Christianity and Islam, and the study of new religious movements. He is interested especially in new and alternative religiosity, non-religiosity, the contemporary religious situation in Europe, and overlaps between religion, violence and war.