The study of religious education is of great interest in analyzing how schools and educational authorities address the demands of multicultural and multi-religious societies and states. As diversity increases through migration, globalization and conflicts, schools are faced with equally diverse challenges, one of which is the religious and cultural diversity that characterizes schools and communities. While many studies have focused on this change and its impact in politics, school and classroom, relatively few have focused on how teachers and educators have fared. Sitting between the new policies and school demographics, teachers and educators have shaped the policy in their engagements. The study of life trajectories shows that the lines between religion and religious education are blurred in personal life histories, and that positions can shift due to personal and contextual developments. They point to the innovative and unexpected turns that individuals trace in their personal life journeys. This book reminds us that we need to pay more attention to the teachers, principals, managers and public intellectuals who shape and are shaped by the changing context of religion and religious education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Religion & Education.

The study of religious education is of great interest in analyzing how schools and educational authorities address the demands of multicultural and multi-religious societies and states. As diversity increases through migration, globalization and conflicts, schools are faced with equally diverse challenges, one of which is the religious and cultural diversity that characterizes schools and communities. While many studies have focused on this change and its impact in politics, school and classroom, relatively few have focused on how teachers and educators have fared. Sitting between the new policies and school demographics, teachers and educators have shaped the policy in their engagements. The study of life trajectories shows that the lines between religion and religious education are blurred in personal life histories, and that positions can shift due to personal and contextual developments. They point to the innovative and unexpected turns that individuals trace in their personal life journeys. This book reminds us that we need to pay more attention to the teachers, principals, managers and public intellectuals who shape and are shaped by the changing context of religion and religious education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Religion & Education.

In recent decades, traditional methods of philology and intellectual history, applied to the study of Islam and Muslim societies, have been met with considerable criticism from rising generations of scholars who have turned to the social sciences, most notably anthropology and social history, for guidance. This change has been accompanied by the rise of new fields, studying, for example, Islam in Europe and Africa, and new topics, such as the role of gender. This collection surveys these transformations and others, taking stock of the field and showing new paths forward.