University College Lecturer Publishes Major New Reference Work on Atheism

Dr Stephen Bullivant, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham is set to officially launch The Oxford Handbook of Atheism next month. Co-edited with Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University, the book will be launched during a symposium entitled ‘Atheism: The Contemporary Debate’ on Friday 6th December at Florida State University in Tallahassee, USA. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism - a 760-page, 46 chapter reference work - explores atheism and the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives (including historical, philosophical and sociological) and in a range of global contexts. In addition, Dr Bullivant has also co-edited the publication Secularity and Non-Religion (Routledge, 2013) with Dr Lois Lee (University College London) and Dr Elisabeth Arweck (University of Warwick). The book, which was published earlier this month, arose from the first international conference on the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network held at Wolfson College, Oxford in 2009. It brings together papers that were presented at the conference that were originally published in 2012 as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Religion. It covers the fields of non-religion, secularity and atheism in terms of families, politics, demography and the wider society using a range of methodologies and theoretical approaches and also includes the paper ‘Interdisciplinary Studies of Nonreligion and Secularity: The State of the Union’, which was co-authored by Dr Bullivant and Dr Lois Lee. Dr Bullivant’s main areas of research include Christian responses to atheism and indifference, and the sociology of nonreligion and secularity. He recently secured a British Academy grant for a project to explore Catholic disaffiliation in Britain, in collaboration with Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester. Stephen commented, “I'm delighted to see these two books published. The Handbook, especially, has been a long time coming: Mike and I have been working on it for over three years. Hopefully, it will be of use to a lot of people - including my own students studying the subject - for a much longer period than that.”