I became fascinated by religion growing up in Kansas, my experience of the landscape strongly affected by the passion and religious beliefs of the people who live there. Religion became a formal focus of study while I was an undergraduate at Amherst College in Massachusetts. I completed for an MSc in Religion in Contemporary Society in the Sociology Department of the London School of Economics. I researched the popularisation of yoga and ayurvedic medicine in Britain for my PhD in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge.

I spent a long period of mentorship under Professor Eileen Barker at the London School of Economics, being a researcher with an organisation she founded, Inform from 2002. I now direct Inform, an independent charity based in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at KCL.

I joined the Religious Studies Department at the OU as a central academic in 2016. My primary employment is as a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University. For 2025-2027, I am a Co-PI (with Stephen Christopher) on a major research project is funded by a John Templeton Foundation Grant (project #63357) and entitled 'New Religiosity and the Digital Study of Eudaimonia.'

Research interests

• Sociology and social history of religion, particularly new and minority religions
• Interfaces between religion, spirituality, health and healing
  prophecy, millenarianism and apocalyptic groups
• Security threats and harm caused by minority religions and ideologies
• Modern and contemporary yoga

As director of Inform, I lead research and information provision about new and minority religious movements. At Inform, I has led team research related to security threats posed by minority religions, conspiracy theories, hate speech and the harm caused by minority religions. I have also been involved in a variety of initiatives to improve the quality of religious education in British schools and strengthen links between university and school-level educators.

Teaching

Inform offers guest lectures on a variety of TRS modules and research seminars as well as student internships for TRS students.

Expertise and public engagement 

Inform regularly sits on a number of expert panels and works regularly creating factsheets for the Religion Media Centre and answering media enquiries from journalists. It sits on the NPCC Witchcraft, Spirit Possession and Ritualistic Abuse Working Group (WSPRA) and the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Evidence-Based Review Board (CT-EBRB). Inform also sits on the Religious Education Council (REC) and seeks to ensure high quality and research-led material will be available as exemplars and resources for the Religious Education.

I have appeared on television for BBC news and on a ABC/Hulu documentary. Radio appearances include programmes on BBC Radio 2, Radio 3, and Radio 4, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA.

Selected publications

O'Brien-Kop, Karen and Newcombe, Suzanne eds. (2025). Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes. Proceedings of the British Academy, 278. Liverpool, UK: The British Academy / Liverpool University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/9781836245643

Harvey, Sarah and Newcombe, Suzanne (2025). ‘From Tradwives to Red Rebels – a preliminary exploration of the dynamics of gender in contemporary millennialist movements’. In: Strum, Tristan and Crome, Andy eds. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Apocalypticism and Millennialism. Bloomsbury Handbooks. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Newcombe, Suzanne and Harvey, Sarah (2025). Hegemonic masculinities and sexual abuse: two case studies.Religion, 55(4) pp. 865–883. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2025.2538955

Shah, Shanon; Cooper, Jane and Newcombe, Suzanne (2023). Occult Beliefs and the Far Right: The Case of the Order of Nine Angles. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (Early access).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2195065

Newcombe, Suzanne; Harvey, Sarah; Cooper, Jane; Forrester, Ruby; Banks, Jo and Shah, Shannon (2023). Cults and Online Violent Extremism. Reports; London: Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), London. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-138.

Inform

New Religiosity Project