Associates
Dr. Srdjan Sremac
Prof. Dr.
Manuela Kalsky
Dr Srdjan Sremac is a lecturer at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the co-director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion at the same university. Srdjan co-edits a book series Lived Religion and Societal Challenges published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is widely published with 18 (co-) authored or edited books and over 50 journal articles and book chapters.
Prof. Dr Manuela Kalsky is Professor of Religion and Society at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (Edward Schillebeeckx Chair for Theology and Society) and director of the Theological Research Centre of the Dutch Dominicans (DSTS). In spring 2016 she was a visiting professor at the Academy of World Religions (Hamburg University). As a well known scholar, she is also regularly involved in the public debate in the Netherlands on the role of religion(s) in a multicultural and multireligious society and has published numerous articles on related themes.
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Besides her research activities, Manuela Kalsky is president of the board of New We, which she initiated in 2009. This organisation has the aim of strengthening social cohesion in order to live together with people from different cultures and religions.
For more information and publications:
https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/m-kalsky and http://www.dsts.nl
Prof. Dr.
E. A. J. G.
van der
Borght
Prof. Dr.
R. Ruard
Ganzevoort
Prof. Dr E.A.J.G. van der Borght holds the Desmond Tutu Chair at the Faculty of Theology. As a professor in systematic theology at the faculty of theology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam his research focuses on issues of ecclesiology and ordained ministry, reconciliation, and theological anthropology
Prof. dr. R. Ruard Ganzevoort is Dean of the Faculty of Theology at VU University Amsterdam and Senator at the Dutch parliament. A widely published researcher in fields like trauma, sexuality, and spiritual care, Ruard is founding co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. He has taught courses in trauma and theology in Congo, Myanmar, Indonesia, South Africa, and at VU University Amsterdam, Peace, Trauma, and Religion program .
Dr. Katya
Tolstoj
Dr. Robert
Beckford
Dr Katja Tolstaja is the founder and director of the Institute for the Academic Study of Eastern Christianity (INaSEC), and is Associate Professor in Systematic Theology at the Vrije Universtiteit, Amsterdam. She specializes in the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church and the impact of the Soviet legacy on post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy. As NWO-Veni laureate (2009-2012) she studied the transformation and (re-)invention of Orthodox theology and practice in Russia and Ukraine. She is currently working to initiate Theology after Gulag as a model for coming to terms with the traumatic Soviet past.
Dr Robert Beckford is the Climate and Social Justice professor at the University of Winchester and professor of Black Theology at the Queen's Ecumenical Foundation and the Vrije Universiteit. In addition, Beckford is a scholar-activist researching the entanglements of faith and racial justice in the Black Atlantic through diverse media texts.
He has written a dozen books that triangulate African Diaspora theology, Black British cultural studies and black radicalism.
Robert's latest book, "Decolonizing Gospel Music: A Radical Praxis," is published by Bloomsbury in 2021. The book is an action-reflection study of Robert's debut contemporary gospel album, The Jamaican Bible Remix. (See https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/religion-philosophy-and-ethics/research/jamaican-bible-remix.aspx)
Beckford is also a British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA), award-winning documentary filmmaker, having presented over twenty documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. Beckford's current film project, 'Redeeming Slavery,' is an independent documentary film on British Christianity's obfuscation of its intellectual and financial investment in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (2021).