Peter Schuurman did his PhD at the University of Waterloo, Canada, on a dramaturgical analysis of Max Weber’s notion of charisma through a case study of Bruxy Cavey and TMH. He is Executive Director of Global Scholars Canada and adjunct faculty of Religion and Theology at Redeemer University.

Jaap Timmer is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, and Senior Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University. He holds a PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen and is the author of Living with Intricate Futures (2000) and numerous articles on religion and sovereignty in Indonesian Papua and Solomon Islands, and on political ecology and access to justice in East Kalimantan. Recently, Jaap is focusing on time and history among Asmat of Papua.

Katie Toomey is a Research Assistant with the World Religions and Spirituality Project.

Aled Thomas is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds and Associate Lecturer at the Open University. A specialist in Scientology, he completed his PhD on the movement at the Open University in 2019 and subsequently published his first monograph as Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion (Bloomsbury, 2021). He is also a co-founder of Alt-Ac, a group promoting “alternative academia,” and is co-host of the Religion and Popular Culture Podcast.

Małgorzata Alicja Biały completed a program for Ph.D. candidates in the Institute for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, where she is working on her thesis about Spiritualism in Poland. She holds an M.A. in Art, specialization: monumental painting (2008) from the History Department at the Pontifical Academy of Theology. She is a co-founder of the Polish Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and a member of national and international organizations devoted to Religious Studies and academic research on Western Esotericism.

** Prior to the publication of this profile Małgorzata Alicja Biały co-authored two other WRSP profiles under the name Małgorzata Alicja Dulska

Dr. Salvador Jimenez Murguia is a professor of sociology at Taft College and the author of numerous books. He has conducted research on a wide variety of topics, including the sociology of religion, food studies, race & ethnicity, and popular culture. Dr. Jimenez Murguia has also written extensively about the Japanese religious group Pana-Wave Laboratory.

Judy Huenneke is Senior Research Archivist at The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University and has a second master’s degree in history from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Judy has worked with the archives of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, for many years as both an archivist and as a records manager. She has also assisted in the preparation of several Eddy biographies and documentaries. Her work at The Mary Baker Eddy Library is focused on researching the history of the Christian Science movement, from its beginnings in the 19th century down to the present day.

Manon Hedenborg White is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Malmö University (Sweden). She holds a PhD in the History of Religions from Uppsala University (Sweden). Her first monograph The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. She is co-director (with Christine Ferguson) of the ESSWE Network on Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality and Review Editor of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (IJSNR). Her main research focus is Western esotericism, New Religious Movements, and contemporary spirituality, and she is especially interested in issues of gender, sexuality, authority, and women’s roles and leadership.

Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, PhD is Professor of Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA. She specializes in cross-cultural research in syncretic religions and the feminine. Her book publications include Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kali, Pombagira, and Santa Muerte (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 & 2018), The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (University of New Mexico Press, 2007 & 2009), and Teatro popular peruano: del precolombino al siglo XX (Warsaw University & the Austrian Institute of Latin America, 1995). Her most recent book, Mythology and Symbolism of Eurasia and Indigenous Americas: Manifestations in Artifacts and Rituals is forthcoming from Berghahn Books in 2022. She has lived, studied, and lectured widely around the world, and is fluent in seven languages.

Donna T. Haverty-Stacke is a Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in History from Cornell University. Haverty-Stacke is the author of The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist (NYU Press, 2020), Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution Since the Age of FDR (NYU Press, 2015), and America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867 – 1960 (NYU Press, 2009).