Ian Reader Author & Editor

Erica Baffelli is a Lecturer in Asian Religion at the University of Otago (New Zealand). Both her doctoral research (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 2005) and her post-doctoral research project as fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) investigated the relationship between the media and ‘image construction’ of Japanese new religious movements. Her research interests lie primarily in the groups’ self-presentation online and offline and in the interaction between religion and popular cultures. Ian Reader, now Professor of Japanese Studies at Manchester and formerly Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster University, has spent over a quarter of a century researching on religion in Japan. Author of several books (including Religion in Contemporary Japan 1991, Practically Religious 1998, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo 2000 and Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku 2005), he has most recently worked on issues of public representation and marketing of religion both in off- and online contexts. Birgit Staemmler has been a member of Tübingen University Japanese Department’s research focus on Internet and religion since 2000 and is currently working on definitions and contexts of the term ‘Shamanism’ in the Japanese Internet. Her doctoral research focused on a ritual of mediated spirit possession in Japanese new religions and was published as Chinkon Kishin: Mediated Spirit Possession in Japanese New Religions (2009).