Anna Halafoff

Biography

Dr Anna Halafoff is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University and leads the Spirituality and Wellbeing (SWell) Research Network. She is the lead investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project on Australian Spirituality and a chief investigator on the Hsing Yun Education Foundation funded Buddhism in Australia project. Anna has also been a chief investigator on two recent ARC Discovery Projects on the Worldviews of Generation Z Australians and on Religious Diversity in Australia and lead investigator on a Templeton Religion Trust funded, International Network for Science, Belief and Society project on (Con)spirituality, Science and COVID-19. She has recently served as the President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion, the Australasian Council Member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and the Secretary/Treasurer of the International Sociological Association, Religion Research Committee 22.

Anna’s research interests include religious diversity, contemporary spirituality, Buddhism, interreligious relations, religion and education, and dis/misinformation and preventing violent extremism (PVE). She is the author of The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions (Springer, 2013), co-author of Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity (with Singleton, Rasmussen and Bouma, Bloomsbury, 2021) and of Religion and Development in the Asia-Pacific (with Clarke, Routledge 2016), and co-editor of Re-enchanting Education and Spiritual Wellbeing (with DeSouza, Routledge, 2017) and of Religious Diversity in Australia: Living Well with Difference (with Ezzy, Banham and Barton, Bloomsbury, 2024).