Staff profiles

Prof James Cox PhD

Honorary Professorial Fellow James Cox

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 8942

I have particular interests in the study of Indigenous Religions, with emphases on Africa, the Arctic and Australia and in methodologies in the academic study of religions.

My interest in approaches to the study of religions developed out of my first degree in philosophical phenomenology, but subsequently I have applied theory to practice in field studies conducted in Zimbabwe and Alaska.

I became interested in Indigenous Religions after I was appointed to a lectureship in Alaska Pacific University in 1981, and pursued this further after my appointment in the University of Zimbabwe in 1989. Most recently, whilst on a teaching exchange with the University of Sydney in Australia, I conducted research on Christian interpretations of Australian Aboriginal religions.

From 1993, I directed the African Christianity Project in the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World (now the Centre for the Study of World Christianity) forging links with universities and research institutes in western and southern Africa.

In 1999, I was appointed to the Religious Studies Subject Area in the University of Edinburgh and was awarded a Personal Chair in Religious Studies in 2007.

From 1 December 2011 until 1 June 2012 I am the de Carle Distinguished Lecturer in the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand working with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

Academic interests

Past President, The British Association for the Study of Religions
Deputy General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religions
Co-editor of the Advances in Religious Studies Series of Continuum Publications and co-editor of the Religion in Contemporary Africa Series of Africa World Press

Current research

I am working on a manuscript to be published by Equinox in London entitled, The Invention of God in Indigenous Societies, which features case studies drawn from my research in Zimbabwe, Alaska and Australia.

Selected publications

2010. An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion. London and New York: Continuum.

2009. 'The Globalization of Localized African Religions: The Case of Kwame Bediako', in Stephen D Goodwin (ed.). World Christianity in Local Context. London and New York: Continuum, 56-65.

2008. 'Community Mastery of the Spirits as an African Form of Shamanism'. DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions, volume 9 (http:www.basr.ac.uk).

2007. From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions. Aldershot: Ashgate.

2006. A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion: Formative Influences, Key Figures and Subsequent Debates. London and New York: Continuum.