Fear Research Network (FeRN)

Erica Baffelli (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester) 

Erica Baffelli is Professor of Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester (UK). Her recent research projects focused on religion in contemporary Japan, religion and media, new and minority religions, religion, gender and violence, and Buddhism and emotions.

She currently PI on a Leverhulme Research Project on "Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities" (RPG-2023-030, 2023-2027). 

Trine Brox (Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen)  

Trine Brox is Associate Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has written extensively about Tibetan worlds, specialising in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, and is currently PI of the international, collaborative project WASTE: Consumption and Buddhism in the age of garbage. 

Jane Caple (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester) 

Jane Caple is a Research Fellow at The University of Manchester. Her research focuses on intersections between religion, economy, morality, and emotion in contemporary Tibetan communities. Her current research project is Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities (Leverhulme Trust RPG-2023-030). 

Aike Rots (Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oslo) 

Aike Rots is Professor of East Asian Religions at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making Sacred Forests (2017) and co-editor of Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific (2026), among other publications. He is currently working on two books on ritual, emotions, and natural environments. 

Frederik Schröer (Freie Universität, Berlin) 

Frederik Schröer is a global historian of 19th and 20th-century South Asia and Tibet. His work focuses on emotions in Buddhism, migration/diaspora, and environmental history. His current research traces human-environment relations among Buddhist reformers in colonial India. He is an editor of  Contributions to the History of Concepts [berghahnjournals.com]. 

Chika Watanabe (Department of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester) 

Chika Watanabe is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at The University of Manchester. Her research examines disaster preparedness and the role of play, intergenerational relations, and memory. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness along the Ring of Fire.  

Sébastien Bachelet (Department of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester) 

Sébastien Bachelet is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology. His research interests include illegality, (forced) migration, advocacy, political subjectivity, imaginaries, hopes, uncertainty, criminalisation, participatory and creative/visual methods with a focus on the Maghreb (especially Morocco) and France.

Maria Elena Bedoya Hidalgo (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester) 

María Elena Bedoya is an Ecuadorian historian and curator based in Madrid. She specialises in public history, visual culture, and critical museology in Latin America from an intersectional perspective. Her work explores race, fear, and emotions through creative research formats. She is Honorary Research Associate at The University of Manchester. 

Ioannis Gaitanidis (Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University) 

Ioannis Gaitanidis is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University (Japan). He is the author of Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan (2022) and co-editor of Teaching Japan: A Handbook (2024) and of Therapy, Spirituality, and East Asian Imaginaries (2025). 

Tim Graf (School of International Studies in Japan, Kanazawa University) 

Tim Graf is an Assistant Professor at Kanazawa University’s School of  International Studies in Japan. His research interests focus on ways  that fear is negotiated in contemporary Japanese Buddhist practices  designed to mitigate disasters and crises, and more broadly deal with  the interplay of religious practice and modern social change. 

Paulina Kolata (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University) 

Paulina Kolata is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She is a scholar of Buddhism in Japan, material and economic practices, and the environmental impacts of religious life under demographic change. She has conducted ethnographic work on waste-making, material abandonment, and ecological precarity. 

Raamy Majeed (Department of Philosophy, The University of Manchester) 

Raamy Majeed is a Lecturer in Philosophy at The University of Manchester and an Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. He works primarily on the philosophy of emotion but has also published in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of race.

Levi McLaughlin (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University) 

Levi McLaughlin is Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (2014) and author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (2019; in Japanese 2024), as well as other publications.

Zhaokun Xin (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester) 

Zhaokun Xin is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at The University of Manchester. His research engages late imperial Chinese literature in conversation with the interdisciplinary fields of affect and gender studies, ritual theory, and medical humanities. His current project is tentatively titled The Uses of Anger in Late Imperial Chinese Literature. 

Valentina Zagaria (Department of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester) 

Valentina Zagaria is an ethnographer of borders, migration, and social movements in North Africa, currently holding a Leverhulme Research Fellowship at The University of Manchester. Her work focuses on dignity as a drive of both protest and migratory movements in the region. She is interested in experimenting with performance and collaborative methods.

Linda Zampol D’Ortia (Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) 

Linda Zampol D’Ortia is Young Researcher MSCA Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice with the project “Emotional Practices, Power Relations, and Asymmetrical Dependencies in Catholic Missions (1549-1700).” Her research interests include global Christianity, early modern Catholic missions, history of emotions, and material history.