Kim Knott was appointed Director of the AHRC Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme in January 2005. She provides intellectual leadership for the programme through the development of its specification and framework and the oversight of its projects, by raising awareness of its work through the engagement of interested scholars, students and other stakeholders, and ensuring its range and coherence. She is assisted in this by the programme's Steering Committee, staff at AHRC and the Programme Administrator.
She works half-time in her capacity as Programme Director and half-time in her post as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leeds where she has studied and worked in a variety of capacities from Research Fellow early in her career, to lecturer, then professor. Her own interest and research in diasporas and migration began in the late-1970s when she exchanged language lessons with local Gujarati Indian women whilst studying for a doctorate on religious practice and organisation among British Hindus, focused on the Hindu temple in Leeds.
Although her first degree was in the humanities, her first job was in the Sociology Department at Leeds where she researched popular religion in the news media and on television. She then began the first of two projects to study the religions of Black and South Asian groups in the UK. In her first article, on religion, migration and identity, she developed a model for analysing the impact of migration factors on religious change. This was followed by articles on religion and ethnicity, and several books, one arising from her doctoral thesis, one on the Hare Krishna movement in Britain, and a later, prize-winning book, Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1998).
Throughout this period, Kim was a member of the Community Religions Project (CRP), a research team at Leeds which fostered the study of religions in West Yorkshire, whether in established Christian communities or new migrant groups. In the late 1980s she became its Director and oversaw the publication of its monograph and research paper series. Since that time she has supervised some thirty research students, most of whom have worked on aspects of contemporary religion in Britain, modern Hindu or Islamic movements and communities, and sociological studies of religion. She has also directed a number of research projects, from her first in the mid-1980s (with Ursula King and Haddon Willmer ) on African Caribbean Christianity in Britain, to later projects on young British Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women, inter-religious social action, and British Hindu oral histories (with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies).
Recent research projects directed by Professor Knott include "Locating religion in the fabric of the secular: An experiment in two public sector organisations" (funded by AHRB, 2004/05, with Myfanwy Franks), "Leeds pilot faiths consultation exercise on restorative justice and the rehabilitation of young male ex-offenders" (2004, with Mat Francis , funded by the Home Office and managed by Leeds Church Institute), and "The feasibility of a regional faiths forum for Yorkshire and the Humber" (2003, with Sean McLoughlin and Mel Prideaux, funded by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly). She also worked collaboratively with the regional Assembly and Churches Regional Commission in 2001/02 to produce Religious Literacy: A Practical Guide to the Region's Faith Communities (co-written with David Randolph-Horn), and to develop and present a training package to accompany it. These projects have been conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Religion and Public Life at Leeds.
Although she has taught courses over the years related to her many interests, from the religions of Britains new faith communities to Hinduism in modern India, and from religious autobiographies to contemporary issues in religion and gender, her current teaching contribution reflects her commitment to transmitting research skills to students. Her masters module on "Religion and Society: Research Process and Methods" introduces postgraduates to thinking reflexively about research skills, from the inception of a project to its analysis and writing up. "The Religious Mapping of Leeds" offers a team of third year undergraduates the opportunity to research at first hand the engagement between religion and other institutions in a selected locality in the city (six areas have been mapped to date).
This interest in social and cultural geography is reflected in her recent research and publications. She is currently compiling a new geography of religion based on her work on religion, spatiality and locality. In her most recent book, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Equinox, 2005), she developed a spatial methodology for the study of religion, and then applied it to the case of the left hand in Western culture. She has also published on religion, community and locality, and has articles in press on the analysis of secular spaces.
Professor Knott was Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds from 1998-2001 and Head of the School of Humanities, 2000-2001. Within the University she has chaired the Examinations Group of the Graduate Board and developed staff training on postgraduate supervision and examination. She is involved in both the Institute for Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies and Leeds Social Sciences Institute, reflecting her interdisciplinary commitments.
Beyond the university, in addition to membership of RAE panel 63 in 2001, she has served in various capacities in the Association of Departments of Theology and Religious Studies and the British Association for the Study of Religions, of which she was President from 1997-2000. She is currently General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religions and a member of the International Committee of the International Association for the History of Religions. She is a Fellow of the RSA.
As well as a busy family life, she listens to jazz and fusion music, plays Samba percussion, reads and runs. She loves the company of friends, but enjoys having time alone to walk and think.
