Professor Jonathan Lanman
Jon Lanman is Professor in Cognitive Anthropology and Assistant Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast. His work on atheism and secularization utilizes both cognitive and social anthropology and aims to provide an account of why some individuals become theists and others become non-theists, why some nations have higher proportions of non-theists than others, and why some non-theists engage in anti-religious social action. While his geographic area of interest is international, his work has focused on the North Atlantic world and, more recently, Japan. In addition to his work on atheism and secularisation, he has also collaborated with Harvey Whitehouse (Oxford) and others to investigate the effects of ritual participation on self-identity, group cohesion, and extreme pro-group action and has written on philosophical challenges in the scientific study of religion.
