Adam Possamai is professor in Sociology and Deputy Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. He is the (co)author and (co)editor of 20 books, and close to 100 articles and book chapters. He is a former President of Research Committee 22 on the Sociology of Religion from the International Sociological Association, and a former President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions. His work has been published in English, French, Spanish, Romanian and Slovakian. He was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.James T. Richardson, J.D., Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he directed the Judicial Studies graduate degree program for trial judges, and also was a faculty member in the Sociology Department and in the Social Psychology doctoral program. He has published nearly 300 articles and book chapters in his career, mostly about new and minority religious groups, including Islam in western countries. He has been a Fulbright Fellow, a Rockefeller Fellow, and has been a formal visitor at universities in England, the Netherlands, and Australia. He has made presentations in over 30 countries during his career. He has served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the American Association of University Professors.Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology at the Australian Catholic University He was the Alona Evans Distinguished Visiting Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College (2009-10). His publications in the sociology of religion include Weber and Islam (1974), Religion and Social Theory (1983), (with Kamaludeen and Pereira) Muslims in Singapore (2010) and Religion and Modern Society (2011). He is the foundingeditor of the journal Citizenship Studies and with John O’Neill of the Journal of Classical Sociology. With Anthony Elliot, he published On Society (2012). From 1998-2005 he was professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He edited the Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology (2006), and was awarded a doctor of letters by the University in 2009.
