Barry Stephenson’s teaching and research includes the study of ritual, religion and the arts, and religion in modernity. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Calgary, in 2005. He resides in St. John’s, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where he is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (MUN, for short).
A former co-chair of the Ritual Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, Professor Stephenson was for several years co-editor of Oxford University Press’s Ritual Studies Series. He currently co-directs the After Church Atlas research project, with colleague Dr. Nicholas Lynch. He is author of Excursions in Ritual Studies, Ritual: a very short introduction, Performing the Reformation: Public Ritual in the City of Luther, and Veneration and Revolt: Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism. With colleagues Sean McGrath and Kyla Bruff (MUN) he founded and runs the not-for-profit For a New Earth, an environmental action group aiming to raise ecological awareness and activism in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.