Prof Bettina E. Schmidt MA, PhD, Dr.Habil.

I teach study of religions and anthropology of religion on undergraduate and postgraduate level including on the MRes Religious Experience. I also supervise research students and welcome inquiries in areas such as anthropology of religion, non-ordinary (religious/spiritual) experience, vernacular religions, and critical study of religions. 

Further roles at UWTSD are:

• Director of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre in Lampeter 
• Coordinator of Research in Humanities 

• British Association for Study of Religions (Secretary 2009-2015, President  2018-2021)
• Member of the board of editors of the peer-reviewed journal INDIANA, a journal in the field of Latin American Studies, published in Berlin by the Ibero-American Institute (since 2004)
• Member of the board of editors of the journal REVER, Revista de Estudos da Religião,  São Paulo (since 2010)
• Member of the editorial board of the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion.
• Member of the board of editors of the book series “Die Religionen der Menschheit“ published by Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart
• Member of the board of editors of the book series “Critical Studies in Religion/Religionswissenschaft” published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen (now Brill)
• Member of the board of editors of the book series “Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies” 

One focus in my research activities is on the African diaspora, with empirical fieldwork in the Caribbean (my PhD thesis, published in 1995 in Germany, was about religion and identity in Puerto Rico), Latin America (my first post-doc research project was about religious festivals in Ecuador),  the U.S.A. (my habilitation research was conducted in New York City among migrants) and Brazil (on spirit possession and trance).

My last research project was about the interpretation of spirit possession and trance. In 2010 I conducted fieldwork in Brazil. In addition to participant observations of possession rituals, I interviewed people of various religious communities about their experience of being possessed. The outcome of the research is published in my new book “Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experiences” (Bloomsbury 2016).

My current research interest is in the area of spirituality and wellbeing. I have conducted online surveys in Brazil and the UK in order to understand how people working in the medical sector and people identifying as religious or spiritual perceive wellbeing and the relationship between the two sectors. In 2018 I began with in depth interviews in Brazil. During the pandemic I collected information about spiritual experiences and Covid19.  

Selection of recent books:

•  2020, co-ed. by Jeff Leonardi, Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of religious experience and health. Sheffield: Equinox.
• 2016, co-ed. with Stephen Engler, Handbook of Contemporary Brazilian Religions (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion, vol. 13) DenHague: Brill.
• 2016, edited, The Study of Religious Experience: Approaches and Methodologies. Durham: Equinox.
• 2016, Spirits and Trance in Brazil: Anthropology of Religious Experiences. London: Bloomsbury.

Selection of recent book chapters and journal articles:

• Living with Spirits: Spirituality and Health in São Paulo, Brazil. In: Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing, ed. by Emily Pierini, Alberto Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo. Oxford: Berghahn, 2023, pp. 73-91.
• ‘The Entanglement of Spirituality, Wellbeing and ‘Spiritual Economy’ in Brazil: The Shift from ‘Living well together’ to ‘Leading a good life’’. In: New Spiritualities and the Culture of Well-being (Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach, Vol. 6), ed. by Geraldine Mossiere. Frankfurt/New York: Springer, 2022, pp. 117-133. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06263-6_8.
• The silence around non-ordinary experiences during the pandemic, with Kate Stockley. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, Vol. 13 (1) (2022). DOI  10.5840/asrr20226889
• ‘Incorporation does not exist’: The Brazilian rejection of the term ‘possession’ and why it exists nonetheless. In: Spirit Possession: Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Worldwide Phenomenon, ed. by Éva Pócs and András Zempléni. Budapest, Vienna, New York: Central European University Press, 2022, pp. 75-92.
• Alister Hardy: a naturalist of the spiritual realm, together with Alexander Moreira-Almeida and Marta Helena de Freitas.  Religions Vol. 12 (2021), DOI: 10.3390/rel12090713.
• Spiritual Healing in Latin America. In: Handbook of Religion, Medicine and Health, Editors: Dorothea Lüddeckens, Pamela Klassen, Justin Stein and Philipp Hetmanczyk. London: Routledge, 2021, pp. 113-125. DOI: 10.4324/9781315207964-10
• ‘The Experience of Seeing: Spirit Possession as Performance’. In: Religion and Sight, ed. by Louise Child and Aaron Rosen (Religion and the Senses series).  Sheffield: Equinox, 2000, pp. 122-140.
• ‘Narratives of Spirituality and Wellbeing: Cultural Differences and Similarities between Brazil and the UK’. In: Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of religious experience and health, ed. by Bettina Schmidt and Jeff Leonardi. Sheffield: Equinox, 2000, pp. 137-157.
• ‘Sabedoria e o significado da vida: uma crítica antropológica’, in: Sapientia:uma arqueologia de saberes esquecidos, ed. by Christoph Wulf and Norval Baitello Junior. São Paulo: Edições SESC, 2018, pp. 61-83.
• ‘Die Geisterbesessenheit und die Ethnologie der Religiösen Erfahrung: Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Konzept des Heiligen von Rudolf Otto’. In: 100 Jahre „Das Heilige“: Beiträge zu Rudolf Ottos Grundlagenwerk, (Theion, Studien zur Religionskunde), ed. by Wolfgang Gantke and Vlad Serikov. Peter Lang Verlag, 2017, pp. 197-211.
• ‘Mami Wata in Brazil – the (ongoing) creolization of the water goddesses Oxum and Iemanjá’. In: Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures, ed. by Samantha Hurn. London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 157-170.
• ‘Körperwissen im Candomblé: Ein Einblick in die Geisterbesessenheit Brasiliens’. In: Paragrana: International Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie, Vol. 25 (1) (2016), pp. 299-312.

Selection of other publications:

• ‘Spirit Mediumship in Brazil: The Controversy about Semi-Conscious Mediums’. In: DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Vol. 17 (2), 2015, pp. 38-53. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18792/diskus.v17i2.70
• ‘Mediumship in Brazil: The Holy War against Spirits and African Gods’. In: Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds, ed. by Jack Hunter and David Luke. Brisbane: Daily Grail, 2014, pp. 206-227.
• ‘Animal Sacrifice as Symbol of the Paradigmatic Other in the 21st Century: Ebó, the Offerings to African Gods, in the Americas’. In: Sacrifice and Modern Thought, ed. by Johannes Zachhuber and Julia Meszaros. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 197-213.
• ‘The Spirit White Feather in São Paulo: The Resilience of Indigenous Spirits in Brazil’. In: Critical Reflections on Indigenous Religions, ed. by James Cox. (Vitality of Indigenous Religions series). (London: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 123-141.
• ‘When the gods gives us the power of ashé’ –Afro-Caribbean Religions as Source for Creative Energy. In: Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production, ed. by Carole M. Cusack and Alex Norman. (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion series) DenHague: Brill, 2012, pp. 445-461.
• O espiritismo porto-riquenho como fundamento da identidade porto-riquenha. In: Espiritismo e Religiões Afro-Brasileiras: História e Ciências Sociais, ed. by Artur Cesar Isaia and Ivan Aparecido Manoel. São Paulo: UNESP, 2012, pp. 163-175.
• ‘Anthropological Reflections on Religion and Violence’, in: Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, ed. by Andreas Murphy. Oxford: Blackwell, 2011. pp. 66-75.
• ‘Meeting the Spirits: Espiritismo as Source for Identity, Healing and Creativity’. Fieldwork in Religion Vol. 3.2 (2009), pp. 178–195.
• Caribbean Diaspora in the USA: Diversity of Caribbean Religions in New York City. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008.