Matthew Engelke specialises in the anthropology of religion. His first major fieldwork project was in Zimbabwe on an apostolic movement with roots in the Makoni District. His primary interest in this work is on the role of textual authority within Christianity, particularly as it relates to theological and philosophical notions of presence, but he has also written on ritual, language and material culture, spirit possession, conversion, and religious history. During his time in Zimbabwe, he also became interested in the discourse of human rights at the local level, and has served on the advisory board of the LSE's Centre for the Study of Human Rights since 2002.
In March 2006, Dr Engelke began a new project, funded by the LSE Annual Fund, STICERD, and the British Academy, on the British and Foreign Bible Society. Most of this research was on the Society's work in England and Wales, and focuses on a number of themes, including: Christianity's role in the public sphere; the dynamics of secularization; and the semiotics of the book. Some of the research has also been archival in nature, and connected more closely to his training as an Africanist (looking in particular at Bible Society history in South Africa).
Most recently, Dr Engelke has received ESRC funding for ethnographic research on the British Humanist Association, through which he hopes to examine the nature of ‘non-religion’, the relationships between humanism and atheism, and humanist commitments to human rights. His research began in January 2011.
Dr Engelke has also conducted work in the history of anthropology on Victor and Edith Turner, focusing on their collaboration and on the gendering of authority within the academy. And in addition to these research projects, he has written more broadly on issues of theory and epistemology within anthropology.
He is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Prickly Paradigm Press|, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Religion in Africa and the advisory boards of the Journal of Southern African Studies and Religion and Society.
Alongside these academic pursuits, Dr Engelke regularly serves as an expert witness in asylum appeal cases for Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom and is a Governor of the LSE.
Selected publications:
Forthcoming. Material Religion. In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, edited by Robert Orsi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forthcoming. The Semiotics of Relevance: Campaigning for the Bible in Greater Manchester. Anthropological Quarterly 84(3)
2011. Media, Mediation, Religion. (Debate with Charles Hirschkind) Social Anthropology 19: 90-102.
2010. Number and the Imagination of Global Christianity: Or, Mediation and Immediacy in the Work of Alain Badiou. In Global Christianity, Global Critique. Special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4), edited by Matthew Engelke and Joel Robbins. Durham: Duke University Press. (See The Immanent Frame's book blog on Global Christianity, Global Critique at http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/category/exchanges/book-blog/global-christianity/|)
2010. Religion and the Media Turn: A Review Essay. American Ethnologist 37(2): 371-377.
2010. Radical Orthodoxy’s New Home? The Immanent Frame. Available at http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/03/18/radical-orthodoxys-new-home/ |
2010. Past Pentecostalism: Rupture, Realignment, and Everyday Life in Pentecostal and African Independent Churches. Africa 80(2): 177-199.
2009. Strategic Secularism: Bible Advocacy in England. Social Analysis 53(1): 39-54
2009. Reading and time: Two approaches to the materiality of Scripture. Ethnos 74(2): 151-174.
2009. (editor) The objects of evidence: Anthropological approaches to the production of knowledge. Oxford: Blackwell. (Originally published in 2008 as the third special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute).
2007. A problem of presence: Beyond scripture in an African church|. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Winner of the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize, Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Winner of the 2009 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing.
2006. (co-editor with Matt Tomlinson) The limits of meaning: Case studies in the anthropology of Christianity|. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
2005. The early days of Johane Masowe: Self-doubt, uncertainty, and religious transformation. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(4): 781-808.
2005. Sticky subjects, sticky objects: The substance of African Christian healing. In Materiality, Daniel Miller (ed). Durham: Duke University Press.
2004. Text and performance in an African church: The Book, "live and direct." American Ethnologist 31(1): 76-91.
2004. "The endless conversation": Fieldwork, writing, and the marriage of Victor and Edith Turner. In Significant others: Interpersonal and professional commitments in anthropology, Richard Handler (ed). [History of Anthropology volume 10] Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2004. Discontinuity and the discourse of conversion. Journal of Religion in Africa 34(1/2): 82-109.
2002. The problem of belief: Evans-Pritchard and Victor Turner on "the inner life." Anthropology Today 18(6): 3-6.
1999. "We wondered what human rights he was talking about": Human rights, homosexuality, and the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. Critique of Anthropology 19(3): 289-313.