Mark Juergensmeyer

Professor of Sociology and Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Global Studies and the founding director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than three hundred articles and thirty books. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, 4th edition 2017), is based on interviews with religious activists around the world--including Buddhist extremists in Myanmar, leaders of Hamas, imprisoned activists associated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and Christian militants in the United States--and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. A previous book, Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State (University of California Press, 2008) covers the rise of new nationalisms in response to the global decline of the secular state. It was named by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year. His book on Gandhian conflict resolution has been reprinted as Gandhi's Way (University of California Press, Revised Edition, 2005), and was selected as Community Book of the Year at the University of California, Davis. He has co-edited The Encyclopedia of Global Religions (Sage Publications 2007), The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions (Oxford University Press 2007), and co-edited with Saskia Sassen and Manfred Steger the Oxford Handbook of Global Studies (Oxford University Press 2019). He co-edited with Craig Calhoun and Jonathan vanAntwerpen Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press 2011). His latest book is God and War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare (Oxford University Press 2020). He has received research fellowships from the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the 2003 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for contributions to the study of religion, and is the 2004 recipient of the Silver Award of the Queen Sofia Center for the Study of Violence in Spain. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Lehigh University in 2004 and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. Since the events of September 11 he has been a commentator in the news media, including CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC, and NPR.