Irfan Ahmad is currently Professor of Anthropology at the department of Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to this new appointment, Ahmad worked as Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. A political anthropologist, he has taught and done research works at University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Monash University (Melbourne) and Australian Catholic University (Melbourne) in Australia. He is the author, most recently, of Religion As Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (2017) and editor of Anthropology and Ethnography are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future (2021).
Jie Kang is Research Fellow and Project Coordinator for ‘Cultural diversity in South-West China and South-East Asia' and 'Temples, rituals and the transformation of transnational network’ at MPI’s Department of Religious Diversity. She is the author of House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors (2016).