I joined the RS team at the OU in 2003, having previously been Reader in Religious Studies at King Alfred's College, Winchester (now the University of Winchester).
I did my PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne under the supervision of Prof John F.A. Sawyer. This was about ancient Jewish self-identities as reveal by the uses of the names "Hebrew", "Israel" and "Jew" in a wide range of literatures including the Qumran scrolls, apocryphal and apocalyptic texts, early Christian and formative Jewish (rabbinic) ones.
By a strange bit of serendipity (which I find to be significant in the career paths of many colleagues) I was invited to contribute a paper about contemporary Druids at a conference ... and so became a researcher among Pagans.
And then I developed an interest in contemporary indigenous religions and have been privileged to spend time with various generous and interesting hosts from Aotearoa New Zealand to Wisconsin USA ... and elsewhere. I've been particularly interested in animism (defined as "relational epistemologies and ontologies" perhaps, or as ways of living in a world understood as a community of persons most of whom are other-than-human). Since this has significant implications for understanding what shamans do I've spent some time researching and writing about them too.
Much of my teaching related work continues to be about Jews and Judaism. Most of my research and postgraduate supervision has been about Pagans and indigenous religions. At the moment I'm co-supervising seven postgraduate research students. I have supervised five others to the successful completion of their PhDs.
It may seem that there's little to connect these areas of teaching and research, but a bit of probing and you'll find similar questions about the negotiation and performance of identity, the choices people make in naming themselves and others, the activities by which people consider it best to grow themselves and others up in relation to their surroundings, and the everyday lived realities of religion rather than elite assertions of how things are meant to be... I'm sure there are more connections too.
I'm course team chair for the new MA in Religious Studies, first presented in October 2009.
I've also co-authored material about "Sacred Places" with Marion Bowman for the Arts Faculty level 1 course: AA100 The Arts Past and Present, presented for the first time in 2008.
I wrote the Judaism component of AD217 Introducing Religions.
I'm the department's coordinator of post-graduate research students.
Follow this link for my publications
(note: this will take you to my personal website where "home" means the index of that site not this one!)
See also Open Research Online for further details of Graham Harvey’s research publications.
I'm a member or officer of the following:
I'm external examiner at the Universities of Middlesex and Birmingham.
For more about my work, publications, commitments and obsessions, follow this link to my personal website.
