 | Career Details: | After studying History at the University of Reading Ian Reader travelled extensively for several years in the Middle East, South Asia, West Africa and North and Central America before doing an MA at Bristol concentrating on religion in Africa. After further travels in Asia he studied Japanese and completed a PhD at the University of Leeds in 1983 on Buddhism in contemporary Japan. Between 1983 and 1989 he and his wife Dorothy (a graduate in Japanese and now working as a translator of Danish and Japanese) lived in Japan, teaching at universities there and conducting research into various aspects of religion in the present day. Ian was particularly interested in topics such as pilgrimage, the purchase of amulets and talismans, and petitions for worldly benefits directed to figures of worship at shrines and temples, but he also conducted research on the ways established religious organisations and institutions have sought to adapt to the changing nature of modern Japanese society, and on Japanese new religions.
In 1989 he became a Lecturer at the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling, teaching courses on Japan as well as contributing to the Religious Studies department's courses on Religion in the Modern World. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer and then, in 1994, Reader. In 1992-93 his family moved to Hawaii for a year while Ian was a Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, working in the Centre for Japanese Studies and the Department of Religion. Between August 1995 and July 1998 they lived in Copenhagen, Denmark when Ian became the first non-Nordic scholar to be appointed to a fellowship at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.
He and his family moved to Lancaster in August 1999. Despite his peripatetic lifestyle and a tradition of moving jobs every two years or so, Ian is currently still working at the university.
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| Teaching: | R St 228 Pilgrimage
R St 250 Contemporary Japanese Religions
R St 484 (MA course) Japanese Buddhism
R St 201 Asian Religions (section on Japanese Religions)
R St 100 Religion in the Modern World (section on Buddhism) |
| Research Interests: | Religion in Japan; pilgrimage; religious violence; millenialism; new religious movements; popular religious activities; prayers and amulets in Japan. |
| Publications: | Among his publications are:
Religion in Contemporary Japan (1991)
Pilgrimage in Popular Culture (1993, co-edited with Tony Walter)
A Poisonous Cocktail? Aum Shinrikyô's Path to Violence (1996)
Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (1998, co-authored with George J. Tanabe Jr.,)
Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo (2000)
as well as other edited volumes and numerous articles and book chapters.
For some years since 1995 he has worked on Aum Shinrikyô, the religious movement that carried out the Tokyo subway gas attack in 1995, and has recently published a second book on the movement and the factors that caused it to use violence. He has also spoken widely on this issue both in academic settings, at conferences and seminars, and in the wider arena, on television and radio in the UK, USA and elsewhere.
Besides his research interests on religion and violence that have developed as a result, he continues to do research on pilgrimages in Japan. Recently he returned to Japan to conduct further research on the pilgirmage around the Japanese island of Shikoku, on which subject he is currently writing a book. He also continues to research other aspects of the contemporary religious situation in Japan. |
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| Interests: | His main interest is his family: his wife Dorothy works as a translator (Danish and Japanese), and they have two children, Rosie (b.1989) and Philip (b.1992), who are used to travelling and to adapting to new places and cultures: Rosie has lived in the UK, Japan, Hawaii and Denmark, and Philip in the UK, Hawaii and Denmark.
Other interests include cricket, beer, good music (i.e. Bob Dylan, the Stones and Elvis), gardening, being nostalgic about Hawaii, the Banzai Pipeline, Denmark and Japan, and fantasizing about where to live next.
Religious faith: reduced to Ashes by the Australian cricket team..... |