Religion, Poverty Reduction and Global Development Institutions

Inaugural Lecture by Emma Tomalin, Professor of Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds

Thursday 30 November 2017 at 16:15h in the Nathan Bodington Chamber (Parkinson Building level 1)

There will be a drinks reception afterwards in the Ante Chamber, 17:30-18:30h

If you plan to attend the drinks reception, please notify Adriaan van Klinken by Friday 17 November.

Dr Emma Tomalin has been Professor of Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds since 2015. She first came to the University of Leeds in 2000, after completing her PhD at the University of Lancaster.

Until recently Tomalin was the Director of the Leeds Centre for Religion and Public Life, and she is currently deputy head of the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science. She is co-convenor of the study group in the UK Development Studies Association (DSA) on “Religions and Development”. Her profile as an internationally leading scholar is evidenced by her membership of the American Academy of Religion's Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion, and of the steering committee of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.

She was recently awarded an AHRC network grant for the project “Keeping Faith in 2030: Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals”, and is co-investigator on an ESRC-funded project about “Understanding the Role of Faith Based Organisations in Anti-Trafficking”. She has also carried out commissioned research for Leeds City Council, Historic England, and UK Government's Department for International Development (DfID), among other societal partners.

Tomalin has widely published in the fields of her interests, specifically religion and global development, and religion and environmentalism. Among many publications, she is the author of Religions and Development (Routledge 2013) and of Biodivinity and Biodiversity: The Limits to Religious Environmentalism (Ashgate 2009), and the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Global Development (Routledge 2015).