Dr. M. A. Zaki Badawj was educated at Al-Azhar
University and the University of London; he has taught at a number
of universities, including Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi
Arabia and Egypt. At present, he is the President of The Muslim
College — a post-graduate theological institution — and chairman
of the Imams and Mosques Council (U.K.) and the Shariah Council.
Vida Barnett is a freelance lecturer, writer
and teacher. She is an Associate Member of Staff of the Christian
Education Movement and a member of the editorial panel of R.E.
Today. She is also co-Editor of the Shap Mailing and Advisory
and Information Officer of the Shap Working Party.
Riffat Batool is a B.A. student in Religious
Studies at Lampeter College. She has spent some time teaching
girls at the Sparkbrook Islamic Centre near her parental home
in Birmingham. She hopes to become a fully qualified teacher in
Islam.
Mary Boyce is Professor Emerita of Iranian Studies,
University of London. She has specialised in Zoroastrian ism,
and lived for a year in a Zoroastrian village, described in A
Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (Oxford University Press,
1977). Her major work, still in progress, is A History of Zoroastrianism
(Brill, Leiden), Vol.1, 1975, Vol.11, 1982, Vol.111, in press.
Sister Barbara Brent returned in 1987 to London
via Rome from Lebanon where she had a year of religious and spiritual
formation. Since then, she has been working in the R.E. department
of Jesus and Mary High School in Willesden. Her main responsibility
is the spiritual animation of the school which involves such things
as the preparation of liturgies and the organisation of residential
weekends and pilgrimages.
Dr. Owen Cole was one of the four people whose
discussions resulted in the formation of the Shap Working Party
and he was Chairman from 1979 to 1981 and now the Publicity Officer.
He now works freelance. Among his most important contributions
are Six Religions in the Twentieth Century and Religion in the
Multifaith School.
David Crossan is Head of Community Activities
at Alderman Callow School and Community College in Coventry. In
1981 and 1982 he spent some time in the Caribbean to explore Rastafari
as an indigenous religious movement. Several of his articles on
Rastafari have appeared in the Shap Mailing and the Journal of
Religious Education.
Jill Davies became in 1977 the Advisory Teacher
for RE. with the I.L.E.A., having responsibility for Personal
Relationships and Moral Education. In 1982 when the I.L.E.A. Agreed
Syllabus was being planned, she took on responsibility for R.E.
for Children with Special Needs.
Clive Erricker is Senior Lecturer in Religious
and Professional Studies at King Alfred’s College, Winchester.
He is Secretary of the Buddhism Resource Project, Convenor of
the Chichester Video Project and, from 1987 to 1989, co-Editor
of Shap Mailing. He both contributed to and edited Teaching Christianity:
a World Religions Approach and was the author of Christian Ethics
and Christian Experience in the Chichester Project series. He
adores wind-surfing.
Humphrey Fisher is Reader in African History
and Convenor of the B .A. and Certificate programmes at the School
of Oriental and African Studies in London University. He is interested
in encouraging more established RE. teachers to come to S.O.A.S.
for the Certificate or the M.A., particularly part-time over two
years.
Brian Gates, M.A., S.T.M., PhD., is currently
Principal Lecturer and head of teaching and research in the fields
of religion and ethics at St. Martin’s College, Lancaster. This
includes B.A., B.Ed., P.G.C.E. and M.A. programmes with full-time
and part-time students and in-service teachers. His major research
interests include the religious and moral development of children
and young people, and comparative ethics. He is Chairman of the
R.E. Council of England and Wales
Professor Richard Gombrich is a Fellow of Balliol
College, Oxford, and Boden Professor of Sanskrit in Oxford University.
His main academic interest is in the history of Buddhism, especially
the very early and very recent history. He has paid eight visits
to Sri Lanka and has lived for the best part of two years in a
Sinhala village. He wonders whether he could still make it to
the top of the mountain.
Cherry Gould has been Co-ordinator for Religious
Education in Berkshire since September 1983. She previously taught
R.E. in Secondary schools. She spent nine months in India from
August 1981, studying some of the religious traditions to be found
there. She has been a Friend (Quaker) for over eleven years and
describes herself as an ecumenical Christian and a disciple of
Jesus.
Richard Gray is Professor of African History
and Chairman of the Centre of Religion and Philosophy at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His publications
include The Two Nations: aspects of race relations in the Rhodesias
and Nyasaland; A History of the Southern Sudan; and Black Christians
and White Missionaries (forthcoming).
Rachel Gregory was Headteacher of small rural
Primary schools for thirteen years before becoming National Primary
R.E. Adviser for C.E.M. from 1982 to 1984. In 1985 she was appointed
as the Curriculum Development Officer for R.E. in Bedfordshire
and the County Adviser for R.E. in 1987. She is Editor and one
of many authors of the Bedfordshire R.E. series and a member of
the B.B.C. Primary Programme Committee.
Mary Hayward is Senior Lecturer and joint Director
of York R.E. Centre at the College of Ripon and York St. John.
Editor of Shap Mailing from 1982—86, she first encountered Shap
in its foundation year — 1969 — and attended many of its earliest
meetings at Shap Wells. In 1983 she launched York Shap, an annual
conference in York. A contributor to and one of the team which
produced the now historic Working paper 36, more recently, she
contributed to the Chichester Project’s Teaching Christian- ity
(Lutterworth 1987) and is a co-author of its forthcoming Religious
Education Topics for the Primary School (Longman 1989).
John Hinnells is Professor of Comparative Religion
at Manchester University and a founder member of the Shap Working
Party — its first secretary. He was editor of the Penguin Dictionary
of Religions, the Penguin Handbook of Living Religions and of
the first two Shap publications: Comparative Religion in Education
(1970) and Hinduism (with Eric Sharpe, 1972). He has also edited
three series of university text books. His current area of research
is the twentieth century belief and practice of Zoroastrians in
the diaspora.
Sue Howell is a mother (but not a grandmother!),
wife and teacher. For the past twelve years she has worked as
a teacher of English as a Second Language at Cranford Infants
School. Before she became a teacher, she was a frustrated ballet
dancer and fabric designer but has now decided that fate has dealt
her the best hand.
Robert Jackson is Senior Lecturer at the University
of Warwick. His recent publications include Approaches to Hinduism
(John Murray, 1988), co-written with Dermot Killingley andd Religions
Through Festivals: Hinduism (Longman, 1989).
Douglas Jones, formerly Head of Humanities at
the Coventry College of Education, is currently an Associate Fellow
in the University of Warwick. He has a long acquaintance with
the Chinese in Britain and also occasionally visits both Hong
Kong and mainland China. Most recent of his publications is The
Chinese in Britain: rebirth of a Community, New Community, Vol.XIV,
No.1/2, Autumn 1987.
Dr.Helen A. Kanitkar is Lektor in the Department
of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological
Institute and author of Hindus in Britain and The Adult Education
Service and Immigrants in Britain. Her current academic interests
include the social aspects of Hinduism, Hindu communities overseas
and Indo-Anglian literature.
Kanwaijit Kaur-Singh, M.A., is the Headteacher
of Stonebridge Infants School (L.B. Brent). She is currently researching
for a Ph.D. on the topic of Contribution of Sikh women to Sikh
Society. She is a Chairperson of Sikh Education Council U.K.,
circulation Manager of Sikh Messenger, former Secretary and Chairperson
of Milan Asian Centre, co-translator of the Sikh Rehat Maryada
(the Code to Sikh Way of life) and a writer and speaker on Sikh
Religion.
Dr. Ursula King is Professor of Theology and
Religious Studies, University of Bristol. She is a member of the
Shap Working Party, a member of the American Academy of Religion
and a former Hon. Sec. of the British Association for the History
of Religions. Her recent publications include contributions to
the Encyclopaedia of World Faiths edited by P. Bishop and M. Darton;
The Spirit of One Earth — Reflections on Teilhard de Chardin and
Global Spirituality, 1988, and Women and Spirituality — Voices
of Protest and Promise, 1989.
Dr. Kim Knott lectures in Religious Studies
at the University of Leeds and is responsible for the Community
Religions Project. Her publications include My Sweet Lord: the
Hare Krishna Movement and Hinduism in Leeds. She edits the Bulletin
of the British Association for the History of Religions and she
is currently researching the place of religion in the experience
of young Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in Britain.
Horace Lashley is currently on secondment from
the Commission for Racial Equality at Warwick University as a
Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Education. He has
been studying the transition from school to work of minority young
people in a Local Education Authority in the West Midlands.
Clive Lawton is Headmaster of the King David
High School, Liverpool. He was Chairman of the Shap Working Party
from 1986 to 1988 and is the Editor of the Shap Calendar of Religious
Festivals. He is currently co-editing a book on the ethics of
six world religions. He hopes to complete a Master’s thesis soon
on the problems faced by new religious communities in Britain
in transmitting their teachings to the second generation.
Hyam Maccoby is Fellow and Librarian of the
Leo Baeck College, London. He is a member of the British Association
for Jewish Studies and the European Association for Jewish Studies.
He is an editorial adviser of the Jewish Quarterly and of European
Judaism. He is the author of Judaism on Trial (on Jewish-Christian
mediaeval disputations) and The Mythmaker (on Paul). His teleplay,
The Disputation, was broadcast on Channel Four in 1986.
Peggy Morgan is Senior Lecturer in the Department
of Theology and Religious Studies at Westminster College, Oxford.
She is a member of the British Association for the History of
Religions, the International Association of Buddhist Studies,
the Shap Working Party and the World Congress of Faiths. She has
written on Buddhism and other faiths for both children and adults.
Eleanor Nesbitt is Research Fellow in Religious
Studies in the Department of Arts Education at the University
of Warwick. Her recent publications include Sikhism in Zaehner,
R. C. 4th ed. The Hutchinson Encyclopaedia of Living Faiths, 1988).
Gwen Nodder currently teaches at Bilton C.E. Middle School, Warwickshire.
Her interest in the multi-faith approach to R.E. was awakened
some 25 years ago while teaching in a school in Peckham, London,
an area of a richly diverse cultural nature and with children
representing a wide range of religious belief and practice.
Mohammed Atiq Quraishy was born in Uganda but
spent his childhood first in Pakistan and then in Kenya. He has
over thirty years of service in the educational profession in
Kenya, rising to the post of Senior Inspector of Schools. Presently
doing an M.Ed. at Brunel University, he is Chairman of Berkshire
Association of Black Teachers and Secretary of Urdu Teachers’
Regional. He is author of two 0-level textbooks for Islamic R.E.
in Kenya.
Dr. Anantanand Rambachan is Assistant Professor
of Religion at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He received
his B.A. from the University of the West Indies and continued
his instruction at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, a traditional Hindu
seminary in Bombay. He received both his Master of Arts and Doctor
of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He has appeared on numerous
media programmes and his writings appear in various scholarly
journals.
Peter Rogers, while continuing to run INSET
courses for the African and Asian Resources Centre at Newman College,
now has responsibility for multicultural education across the
Association of Newman and Westhill Colleges, Birmingham.
Dame Cicely Saunders trained as a nurse and
a social worker before qualifying as a doctor in order to work
with the pain of advanced cancer and other diseases. She has now
spent 40 years alongside dying people and their families, and
her views are the fruit of long experience and optimism about
developments in the whole field of care for people with advanced
disease and dependence.
Christopher Shackle has been on the staff of
the School of Oriental and African Studies since 1966, where he
is now Professor of the Modern Languages of South Asia in the
University of London. His publications in the field of Sikhism
include A Guru Nanak glossary (SOAS 1981), An Introduction to
the Sacred Language of the Sikhs (SOAS 1983), and The Sikhs (Minority
Rights Group Report No. 65, revised edition 1986).
Indarjit Singh, J.P., writes and broadcasts.
He is Vice-Chairman of the Interfaith Network, U.K., Chairman
of the Sikh Committee for Interfaith Relations, Executive Member
of U.N.A. Religious Advisory Committee and Executive Member of
the World Congress of Faiths. He is Editor of The Sikh Messenger
and advises the C.R.E. and the Home Office.
Ninian Smart is currently J. F. Rowny Professor
of the Comparative Study of Religions at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. He has until recently continued to teach regularly
at Lancaster where he was founding professor of the Department,
in 1967. In 1976 he started teaching in California, and commuting
back to England. He has recently published Religion and the Modern
Mind and The World’s Religions.
Karena Smith is a Religious Studies graduate
involved in visual research for the media. She is a freelance
illustrator who takes an active interest in multifaith matters,
particularly where they pertain to education, the arts or women’s
studies. Philip Steer is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church,
based in Norfolk.
Christine Trevett teaches Semitic religions
and Biblical languages in the Department of Religious Studies
at the University of Wales, Cardiff. She has also been a Secondary
school Religious Studies teacher and a teacher-trainer. She is
a Quaker with an interest in reclaiming the religious history
of women.
Frank Whaling is Senior Lecturer in Theology
and Religious Studies, and holds a doctorate in Comparative Religion
from Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society,
of the International Biographical Association and of the World
Literary Academy, and Research Fellow and Fellow of the American
Biographical Institute. He has published very widely and, most
recently, edited in 1987 Religion in Today’s World.
Angela Wood is Advisory Teacher for R.E., Hounslow.
She has published several school materials especially on Jewish
and Muslim subjects. As conference organiser for the Standing
Conference for Interfaith Dialogue in Education, she is keen to
promote story-telling and active learning, and has an interest
in the relationship between multifaith R.E. and antiracism. Against
a long background as Head of R.E. at Secondary level, in her advisory
work she now appreciates the early years as the key to it all.
Editing Religions and Education has been for her a growth point.
. . she still sings a lot. |