Carole M. Cusack, Bernard Doherty, Christopher Hartney, and Raymond Radford (eds), Spirit of the Antipodes: Religion and the Study of Religion in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand By Carole Cusack

Carole M. Cusack, Bernard Doherty, Christopher Hartney, and Raymond Radford (eds), Spirit of the Antipodes: Religion and the Study of Religion in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand By Carole Cusack https://www.academia.edu/164965136/Carole_M_Cusack_Bernard_Doherty_Christopher_Hartney_and_Raymond_Radford_eds_Spirit_of_the_Antipodes_Religion_and_the_Study_of_Religion_in_Australia_and_Aotearoa_New_Zealand?email_work_card=title The International Association for the History of Religion (IAHR) was founded in 1950 in Amsterdam. The organization meets every five years, and after the 2015 congress at University of Erfurt, Germany it was decided that the 2020 Quinquennial Congress would be held at University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, which would have been only the third time the professional association had met in the Southern Hemisphere (after the University of Sydney in 1985, and Durban, South Africa in 2000). Indologist Will Sweetman guided the Otago bid and there was great optimism about hosting our global colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere. Australian scholars Christopher Hartney (University of Sydney) and Bernard Doherty (Charles Sturt University) proposed a volume showcasing the history of Religious Studies/ Studies in Religion in the Antipodes in 2018, circulated a call for chapters, and produced a completed proposal with some fully-drafted chapters in 2019. Yet 2020 was blighted by the Covid-19 global pandemic – the first lockdown in Australia began on Monday 23 March and New Zealand followed suit on Wednesday 25 March – and Australia’s airports remained closed until 18 December 2021. It quickly became clear that the Quinquennial Congress of the IAHR in Dunedin could not occur. The commitment to producing this book continued to be strong among contributors, but the years from 2020 to 2022 were difficult. Teaching online and coping with the disruptions of the pandemic took a severe toll. ...