People > Steering Committee > Graham Harvey

Graham Harvey is professor of religious studies at The Open University. His research and teaching bring interests in ritual and performance into conversation with materiality in approaches to lived religion. His recent research largely concerns “the new animism”, especially in the rituals through which various Indigenous peoples and other communities engage with the larger-than-human world. His recent teaching related work has involved a focus on foodways and associated “purity” practices.

His publications include Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life (2013), The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013) and Animism: Respecting the Living World (2nd edition 2017). He is editor of the Equinox series “Religion and the Senses”, the first volume of which, Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses (2018), he co-edited with Jessica Hughes. He is also co-editor of the Routledge monograph series “Vitality of Indigenous Religions”.

He is currently developing a project concerning the effectiveness of performances in which Indigenous people present their cultures and knowledges to metropolitan and global audiences in festivals, museums and galleries.