Network members will be adding their details here over the course of the network.

Dr Joe Aldred
Joe Aldred is an ecumenist, broadcaster, speaker and writer. He is responsible for Pentecostal and Multicultural Relations at Churches Together in England; director of Respect Enterprises Ltd; and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton. He is a BBC radio presenter; and has extensive experience as chair or member of strategic councils, boards and committees in the areas of education, faith and health. Past posts include regional bishop, pastor, director of the Centre for Black and White Christian Partnership, NHS Primary Care Trust Chairman, and chair of the Council of Black Led Churches. Joe has an earned PhD in Theology from Sheffield University and is author/editor of several books and articles including his most recent book ‘Thinking outside the box – on race, faith and life’ (Hansib 2013). Joe is married to Novelette, a psychotherapist, and they have three grown up daughters.

Mary Anderson
Mary is a longstanding member of CAG Consultants, having joined the
Cooperative in 1995. She is an experienced researcher and facilitator, with
strong community engagement skills, and knowledge of faith and planning
issues.

Mary has contributed to three studies on faith and planning issues, led by
CAG Consultants in partnership with LUC and Diverse Ethics. The first
study, for the GLA, examined the spatial needs and planning experiences of
faith groups in London. The second study researched the spatial needs of
faith groups in Oadby and Wigston, near Leicester, while the most recent
study developed community profiles and spatial needs assessments for faith
groups in Northampton. All three studies have made recommendations on how
planning policy can better meet the needs of faith groups.

Professor Chris Baker
Chris is William Temple Professor of Religion and Public Life at the University of Chester and Director of Research for the William Temple Foundation. He is also Director of the Centre for Faiths and Public Policy at the University of Chester. Chris is a leading researcher and published author in the field of religion and public life, with 6 research projects (as a PI and CI and totalling at £275,000), 8 books and over 30 journal articles and chapter contributions in this field of enquiry. His particular focus is on the relationship between religion and urbanisation, the role of religion in public policy and social welfare, and the role of religion in civil society and the reshaping of church within the urban environment. To this end Chris is a leading theorist and exponent on ideas relating to the post-secular city and post-secular citizenship, religious and spiritual capital and moral freighting. His work is focussed on the UK experience, but is also impacting on debates within Europe, the U.S. and Australia.

Nairita Chakraborty
I am Nairita Chakraborty, chartered member of the Royal Town Planners Institute. My professional specialisation is primarily design, heritage and building conservation. I have been working in various local authorities as Design and Conservation Officer for the past eight years. My work involves providing design related advice for new development within conservation areas and guidance on restoration of listed buildings and other heritage assets. Through my work and my own specific interest, I have developed a keen curiosity in multiculturalism and conservation. In my everyday work, I have often come across conflicting notions of understanding of the prevalent and established ‘English’ architecture; as well as lack of appreciation of the architectural diversity that can result from a multicultural community. In an increasingly multicultural country, I would like to understand whether the concept of ‘common heritage’ really exists. Does a multi-faith community invoke the same pride on places of worship and their architectural styles or is it just ‘politically correct’ to accept another’s faith and their practices? Most importantly, I would like to know how education and practice in architecture and planning can help in the co-existence of the very English Vernacular and the growing multicultural community.

The Venerable Alastair Cutting
The Diocese of Southwark includes most of south London & East Surrey, from London Bridge to Gatwick airport, from Surbiton to Thamesmead, from areas multiple deprivation to great affluence, from vibrant and gritty urban through suburbia to rural communities. As one of six archdeacons, I share responsibility for the 65 churches in the north-eastern area of the Diocese.

The faith communities in South London are evident everywhere, for example: there are more African churches in the London Borough of Southwark than anywhere else on the planet outside Africa!

The Church of England covers every inch of the country, and each parish takes seriously its responsibilities to all its parishioners – not just members of it’s congregations. Historically this included schools & hospitals, these days were also involved with food banks & youth work, credit unions & emergency response chaplains.

Dr Bianca Dumling
Bianca is the Director of Intercultural Ministries “Together for Berlin”, an inter-denominational urban ministry organization in Berlin, Germany. Her ministry largely involves applied research, training, consulting, networking, and collaboration.

Prior to this position Bianca was Assistant Director of Intercultural Ministries at Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also a founding member of Foundation Himmelsfels, where she served two years as the project coordinator for an intercultural reconciliation project. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, studying emerging immigrant churches in Germany and their relationship with mainline churches. Raised in the Southern part of Germany close to the black forest, Bianca earned her degree in European Community Education Studies as a licensed social worker in Koblenz and a Master of Arts in Intercultural Work and Conflict Management in Berlin.

Dr Claire Dwyer
Claire is a Reader in Human Geography at University College London where she is also co-director of the Migration Research Unit and Convenor of the Msc in Global Migration. Claire’s work has focused particularly on transnationalism and diasporas with interests in faith communities. http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/people/academic-staff/claire-dwyer

Recent academic work has explored the transnational geographies of suburban faith in the UK and Canada and Claire has published on ‘Highway to Heaven’ in Vancouver and new religious buildings in suburban London. She is currently leading an AHRC Project on ‘Design, Material Culture and popular creativity in suburban faith communities’ http://www.makingsuburbanfaith.org/ which involves collaboration with photographers, an artist and architects alongside eight different suburban faith communities.

Professor John Eade
John Eade is Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, Visiting Professor at the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, and a member of the Migration Research Unit at UCL. His research has focused on global migration, urban ethnicity and identity politics as well as pilgrimage and tourism. His books include the single authored The Politics of Community (1989) and Placing London (2000), the single edited Living the Global City (1997) and the co-edited Contesting the Sacred (1991), Reframing Pilgrimage (2004), Transnational Ties (2008),  Accession and Migration (2009) and Pilgrimage, Politics and Place-Making in Eastern Europe (2014). He is currently researching religion and movement across London and pilgrimage and politics across Europe. He is co-editor of two book series – Religion, Travel and Tourism (Routledge) and Pilgrimage (Ashgate).

Dr Richard Gale
Richard is Co-Investigator for the AHRC Faith and Place network. He is also Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University, whose main research lies at the intersection of geography with sociology. His primary interests are in the areas of ethnic and religious segregation, place and the politics of religious identity, religion and urban governance, and ethnicity and political participation. To date, much of Richard’s research has contributed to public and academic debates surrounding the geography of Muslim identity in the UK, concentrating above all on the politics of the planning process surrounding the development of mosque architecture in key locations, including Birmingham and Leicester. Alongside this research, Richard was part of a team based at Oxford University, which undertook an extensive survey of all publicly registered Muslim mosques, Sikh gurdwaras and Hindu mandirs in England and Wales between 1998 and 2001. More recently, Richard has researched extensively on the theme of political engagement among young people of minority ethnic heritage in Britain, and on changing British Muslim residential patterns as revealed in the 2001 and 2011 Censuses.

Dr Clara Greed
Dr Clara Greed is emerita Professor of inclusive urban planning, at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and is now semi-retired but still active in research, writing and campaigning. She is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and other bodies concerned with the built environment, architecture, planning, and urban social issues. She is particularly interested in the social aspects of planning and has long worked on ‘women and planning’, gender, equality, disability, urban design, accessibility and other diversity issues.  In recent years she has increasingly returned to her previous interests in urban theology and the relationship between religion and urban structure. Currently she continues to research the problems that Pentecostal churches in the UK have in trying to getting planning permission to house their large congregations whether they can, including in ex-cinemas, community centres, industrial units. Given that many such churches comprise African and other non-traditional congregations there is an added element of racism to address too.  She has published lots of books, articles, papers etc, in a range of journals such as Urban Studies on mainstreaming gender into urban policy making, and did a chapter for Justin Beaumont and Chris Baker in their book on the post secular city.  She is currently completing revisions to a chapter for Yamini Narayanan’s book on the relationship between Hinduism, urban planning and gender or city form (as urban theology is not limited to the West) indeed it is only in the West that people do not believe anymore.  The new edition of her textbook, Planning in the UK, has just come out published by Palgrave Macmillan, and whilst it covers many policy issues one can still find ‘a trail of bread crumbs’ in this book (and all her others) which may lead readers to think about deeper things.

Synthia Griffin
Synthia Griffin, Curator of Regeneration & Community Partnerships leads the galleries work on community arts engagement in the neighbourhoods that surround the gallery. In 2013/14 she worked with photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews on a commission called Sunday Service with a specially produced publication, exhibition and film exploring the faith community in South London. She was particulary interested in the large number of black majority churches in Southwark and sought to capture them working through the network Southwark for Jesus. She worked in particular with those that have created new spaces for worship in buildings that were once factories, warehouses and bingo halls. She explored and observed church life, the distinctive type of worship and the architectural spaces that have been reinvented.

The Reverend Mark Lees
Mark is married with 4 children and is Chair of Trustees for the East Northants Faith Group (The Coordinating body for the Faith Sector in East Northants) as well as Minister for Missions and Community at the Full Gospel Church in Rushden. Mark has worked in Community Development in various roles and countries over the last 25 years. Over the last 10 years ENFG has  grown and established itself as the core facilitator bringing the Faith Sector into active engagement with the statutory and voluntary sector across the county and now sits at the heart of planning and development. In addition to this ENFG has established key works in the fields of homelessness, poverty alleviation and support of vulnerable groups within society.

Dr John Maiden
 As a historian of modern religion one of my interests is debates and discourses around the appropriation of buildings for worship by religious groups, and also the inter- and intra-religious sharing and transferring of particular sites. What has been the role of buildings in wider inter-religious and ‘race’ relations in the British context? What have been the issues around the re-negotiation of religious spaces, and how have discourses of theology, culture/ethnicity and national identity been articulated? At present I am particularly interested in historical debates in the Anglican Church about the sale of redundant buildings to other- than-Christian religious groups; and also the significance of buildings in relations between black and white Christians since the 1950s. I have also been a co-leader for the Building on History: Religion in London project, which has worked with a variety of stakeholders in London to contribute to their self-understanding by transferring the insights of academic historical research in relevant ways.

Dr Marcel Maussen
Marcel Maussen is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. His research concerns issues of religious diversity and governance of cultural and religious pluralism. In 2009 he completed a PhD-thesis entitled Constructing Mosques: the governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands. In this dissertation he explored the various ways in which the building of Islamic houses of worship was “made meaningful” in public policy discussions, tracing the history of the issue back to the colonial era. Some of his publications related to the issue of faith and place are: “Policy discourses on mosques in the Netherlands 1980-2002: Contested constructions” (2004) in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, “Islamic presence and mosque establishment in France: colonialism, arrangements for guest workers and citizenship” (2007) in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Colonial and Post-Colonial governance of Islam. Continuities and ruptures (Amsterdam University Press, 2011) (edited book with Veit Bader and Annelies Moors).

Dr Katie McClymont
I am a senior lecturer in Planning in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at UWE where I teach planning theory, public participation and research methods. I am interested in whether planning is able to acknowledge, or even promote, spiritual values of places, and have been trying to develop these ideas theoretically through my concept of’ municipal spirituality’. I wish to take these ideas further by exploring place based values in communities, specifically around the designation of Assets of Community Value. I am also currently researching and writing about issues around planning and cemeteries, and developing a research bid about deathscapes and provision for migrant and established BME communities with colleagues at UWE and UCL.

Dr R David Muir
David is Lecturer in Ministerial Theology at the University of Roehampton, church liaison tutor and co-chair of the National Church Leaders’ Forum. David was director of Public Theology and Public Policy at the Evangelical Alliance. He taught theology and history at a number of UK universities and was adviser to the vice chancellor of London Metropolitan University. He has a PhD from King’s College, London University, in Black Theology & Pentecostalism. David’s interest are in political/public theology, critical theory and apologetics.

Shahed Saleem
Shahed Saleem is an architect and researcher living and working in East London. His architectural practice specialises in community architecture and places of worship, and he has been working with Muslim communities for over a decade exploring the possibilities of a new Muslim architecture in Britain. He has worked on a number of mosque projects, mostly in London, from new buildings to alterations and adaptations. Through this work his practice engages with processes of making community and religious spaces, negotiating discourses of planning, community and visual cultures.

Saleem has authored a major monograph entitled, ‘The British Mosque, a social and architectural history’, due to be published by English Heritage in 2015, which is the first comprehensive account of Muslim architecture in Britain. He has also published a number of articles on different aspects of mosque history and culture. Since 2010 Saleem has been a member of English Heritage’s Places of Worship Forum, has served as a jury member for the ACE/RIBA Religious Building of the Year Award, has been nominated for the V&A Jameel Prize for Art and Architecture 2013 and acts as a consultant for the Muslim Council of Britain’s Research and Documentation Committee.

Saleem graduated from Kingston University, gained his professional accreditation at the Architectural Association and has obtained a Masters in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He teaches at the University of Westminster on the Masters programme in Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation, and regularly acts as a guest critic and lecturer in various institutions.

John Richardson
Ecumenical Officer, Churches Together in South London (CTSL), since 2005. With the aim of ‘making connections for Christ’,  CTSL is a network of churches together groups, local ecumenical partnerships and other ecumenical organisations South of the River.  It has emphasised the significance of independent black majority churches in this area and John has built up relationships with pastors and members who want to be part of wider groupings.  CTSL sponsored Being Built Together, the research project on new black majority congregations undertaken by the University of Roehampton, and is taking forward its recommendations. John is frequently approached by congregations seeking help in finding places for worship and fellowship so has a particular interest in the work of the Faith and Place Network.  He is a lay Anglican, a former Director of the NHS Central Office for Research Ethics Committees, and still involved in that sphere as Chair of the research ethics committee at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.

Dr Andrew Rogers
Andrew is the Principal Investigator for the AHRC Faith and Place network and Principal Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Roehampton. Andrew convenes a number of undergraduate programmes in Ministerial Theology at Roehampton that attract many students from black majority churches across greater London and beyond. His research has focussed on investigating the practices of churches and their interaction with the world around them, taking a primarily theological ethnographic approach.

Andrew’s interest in faith, place and planning grew out of the Being Built Together project, which investigated the growth of new black majority churches (nBMCs) in the London Borough of Southwark. Running from 2011-2013, this project had a particular focus on the challenges presented by the high concentrations of nBMCs in the borough, especially in relation to premises and planning. Andrew was the Principal Investigator for Being Built Together, a project which had many partners and funders, including a number of parachurch organisations, the Diocese of Southwark, the Metropolitan Police and Southwark Council. The final report was published in June 2013, and an article was also published by Peter Lang in 2013 as ‘Walking Down the Old Kent Road’. The final report concluded with 16 recommendations for four parties who have a stake in nBMC premises and planning issues, namely nBMCs, local neighbourhoods, historic churches and local authorities. Following up these recommendations, particularly those focussed on planning policy, led to joining with others working in this field to create the Faith and Place network.

Dr Huw Thomas
Huw is a Reader in the School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University. For many years he has undertaken research into aspects of the UK planning system, particularly the ways it engages with various kinds of users and publics. In 2000 he wrote ‘Race’ and Planning : the UK experience (London, UCL Press), and in 2008 edited a special issue of Planning Practice and Research on ‘Race’, Faith and Planning. In recent years he has published papers on the user-experience of planning, and on values and planning. For over fifteen years he has been active in the inter-disciplinary Cardiff Values Group , which examines the role of values in professional lives and activities. As part of that work he co-edited Emerging Values in Health Care: the challenge for professionals (London, Jessica Kingsley, 2010) . He is a chartered town planner.