Over the past twenty years, profound transformations have affected the global landscape and, with it, the academic study of religions. In light of these changes, it is timely to revisit earlier attempts to conceptualize the field from a global perspective. In the early 2000s, Gregory D. Alles embarked on a collaborative project mapping the study of religions as a global enterprise, resulting in the edited volume Religious Studies: A Global View (2008). In the introduction, Alles noted that while a global community of scholars of religion was emerging, an asymmetry of knowledge persisted, whereby results, methods, and theories did not circulate equally across the world. The volume offered an overview of the study of religions in its global diversity while reflecting on the commonalities that allow us to speak of a distinctive field. This panel is the second of two collaborative sessions organized by the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), one of the IAHR’s member associations, to revisit and update selected findings of the book. Session I, held as part of the AAR’s June 2026 online meeting, featured perspectives from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, New Zealand, and Latin America. This second session turns to North America, Africa, Taiwan, and India. Together, the two sessions explore how regional conditions have reshaped the field over the past two decades and consider what these developments mean for the study of religions as a global scholarly enterprise.
In person in Denver – North America:
Sarah Hammerschlag, University of Chicago, Chicago
In person in Denver – Sub-Saharan Africa:
Kudzai Biri, Hope College, Holland, MI
In person in Denver – South and Southeast Asia:
Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya, University of Delhi
Pre-recorded – Taiwan:
Wei-hsian Chi, Academia Sinica, Taipei