Dr Abel Ugba

Abel Ugba is an Associate Professor and the Director of Taught Postgraduate Studies in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. His research and pedagogical interests cover sociology of religion, migration and media. For two decades, he has studied transnational religions by African diasporic groups and everyday religiosity in immigration contexts. This has included an empirically based investigation of transnational Pentecostalism among Europe’s new African diasporas, focusing on the implications of religiosity for self-understanding and for the construction of social boundaries and commonalities in a precarious immigration context. The outcomes of this research are documented in Shades of Belonging…, a monograph published by Africa World Press in Trenton, USA. More recently, Abel has been researching the innovative adoption and adaptation of divine healing practices by Pentecostal Africans in ‘secular’ Britain and some of the conflicts and negotiations that have characterised the interface between immigrant-led minority religions and the dominant cultures and religions. He has conducted multinational migration and religion-related projects and written country reports for Ireland and the United Kingdom. Abel is currently the vice president of the African Association for the Study of Religion (AASR). In that capacity, he serves as an adviser on a multinational project on ‘The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Transnational Young People of African Migrant Background,’ based at the University of Glasgow. He is also a convener and a co-Investigator of a research and writing project sponsored by the British Academy. Abel’s most recent publications include an overview of the history and dynamics of Europe’s Mega Churches for a Routledge’s Handbook; and an analysis of the ‘Irish State and Immigrant Religions,’ a contribution to The Study of Religions in Ireland: Past, Present and Future.