Paul-François Tremlett: I joined the Religious Studies department at the Open University in 2010. I have a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). For my doctorate, I conducted ethnographic research in the Philippines around the extinct volcano Mount Banahaw, a place popularly associated with healing, magic and “Rizalism”.
I am interested in theory and method in Religious Studies, and, as well as ethnographic research in the Philippines, I have conducted research in Taiwan around death and secularism and Hong Kong and London, on the Occupy movement. I am currently researching the formation of transnational “moral publics” in relation to campaigns by Filipino human rights organisations in Europe and the Philippines.
My recent teaching has focused on religious change and the aftermath of the French revolution particularly in relation to Henri Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte (Open University module A113), and “fetishism” in relation to technology, power, humans and things and the writings of Marx, Latour and Haraway (OU module DD218). I am currently writing about religion and protest in Hong Kong for a new Open University social science module, D113.
My research and teaching interests are aligned with the Open University’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and to the Religious Studies department’s commitment to knowledge exchange with schools and other stakeholders to promote critical religious literacy, and I am on the editorial board of three, international peer-reviewed journals, Culture and Religion, Implicit Religion and Critical Research on Religion. I am a member of the British Association of the Study of Religions, SOCREL and the Royal Anthropological Institute.