Mostly what I research these days relates to the burgeoning field of religious futurisms. What shape will religions take under the challenge of ongoing technological development? How might the dawn of posthumanism, AI or alien lifeforms reshape terrestrial faiths?
The world is becoming MORE religious, not less. We need to account for that, and attempt to understand how it will manifest.
My blog posts on the topic of Religious Futurism can be found here.
So far, I’ve completed a monograph on Science Fiction and Catholicism, available here. There’s a review of it in the Ancillary Review of Books that gives a great sense of what it contains.
I’m currently working on Buddhist Futurism. I published an article on Buddhism and Pulp SF in 2021 in Literature and Theology. A chapter on the crypto-Buddhism of Arthur C. Clarke appeared in the centenary collection of essays edited by Paul March-Russell and Andrew M. Butler in January 2023, and a further essay on the dharma of Frank Herbert’s Dune was published in Italy that same month.
I’m also interested in the work of scholars looking at other religious futurisms. To that end I am currently editing a volume of essays on Religious Futurisms with Dr Sumeyra Buran.
