Linda Woodhead was appointed to King's in 2021. Previously she was Distinguished Professor at Lancaster University.  She has held visiting positions  at Muenster, Ottawa, Princeton, Stanford and other universities. She studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where she took a Double First.  She was Director of the £17m AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme. She is regularly in the media speaking about religion today. 

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Religion, magic, spirituality
• Values and ethics
• Contemporary religious and cultural change, in Britain and beyond
• Gods and spirits, good and evil

Linda works across different disciplines, particularly theology, religious studies, and the social scientific study of religion. She has written extensively about the decline of institutional religion, especially the churches, and the rise of alternative spiritualities.She would welcome applications from research students in any of the topics above.

Selected publications

• Unknowing God: Towards a Post-Abusive Theology. With Peter Harvey. Cascade 2022.
• Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age. With Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw. University of Chicago Press 2021.
• The Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society. Ed. with Jayeel Cornelio, Francois Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen. Routledge 2021.
• That Was the Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People. With Andrew Brown. Bloomsbury 2016.
• The Spiritual Revolution. Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. With Paul Heelas. Blackwell 2005.

Teaching

Linda teaches in the broad areas of Sociology of Religion and Contemporary Ethics, Culture and Values.

Expertise and public engagement

Linda works with journalists covering religion, culture and values, and regularly broadcast on these topics. She founded the Westminster Faith Debates with the Rt Hon Charles Clarke.

Linda continues to work collaboratively on improving how religion is handled in schools and public life.