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DSR faculty member Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) for his outstanding scholarly achievements, and inducted at a ceremony held in Vancouver on November 8, 2024.
Election to Fellowship is the highest honour of the RSC in the arts, social sciences, humanities and sciences. Professor Coleman's citation for his induction into the Academy of Social Sciences notes his pioneering work in the development of both the anthropology of Christianity and the study of urban forms of religious expression.
Coleman is an outstanding anthropologist of religion with interests ranging over the globalization of Pentecostalism, contemporary ritual forms, and the theory and ethnography of pilgrimage. He researches urban religion, sustainability, and religious infrastructures and urban development.
The author of several books – most recently Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement (New York University Press, 2022) – and a prodigious number of articles and chapters, as well as co-editor of many volumes, Coleman has been with the University of Toronto since 2010.
A leading analyst of religion in plural cultural contexts, he has challenged conventional anthropological conceptions of the operations of ritual in contemporary societies. His internationally recognized, timely work has opened up research into Pentecostalism as a globalizing phenomenon, and introduced important new paradigms in the study of pilgrimage.
Citation, Royal Society of Canada
His professional activities include a term as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (2017-19), co-editorship of the International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford) and membership of the editorial board of the journal Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses. Among his many honours: he is a seven-time recipient of the University of Toronto’s Dean’s Award for Excellence; an elected Connaught scholar (University of Toronto); an International Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; and a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Theologically Engaged Anthropology, University of Georgia.
In 2024 he was elected to deliver the Wilde Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion (University of Oxford) and appointed Goldsmiths’ College (University of London) ‘Annual International Lecturer on Religion’.
DSR Excellence: Royal Society of Canada
Fellows
Coleman’s honour brings to five the number of Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada currently in the Department for the Study of Religion. Professor Pamela Klassen (Chair & Graduate Chair) was elected in 2019, John Kloppenborg (University Professor) in 2014, David Novak, (Professor Emeritus, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies Emeritus) in 2011, with Peter Richardson (Professor Emeritus) having received the honour in 2005.
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In 2024, in addition to Simon Coleman, two affiliate members of the DSR were also elected as Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada: Kamari Maxine Clarke, Distinguished Professor of Transnational Justice and Sociolegal Studies and Director of the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, and Willi Goetschel, Professor, Department of Philosophy.
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College Members
The DSR also has the distinction of two of its faculty – Amira Mittermaier and Kevin Lewis O'Neill – having been elected as Members of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. The College is Canada's first national system of multidisciplinary recognition for emerging Canadian intellectual leadership. College Members are those who, at at early stage in their career, have demonstrated an exceptional level of achievement.
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