Dr Zainal Abidin Bagir
Director of the Center for Religious & Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS)
Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University (GMU)
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Biography
Dr. Zain al Abidin Bagir is the Head of the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, a graduate degree program and research center at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia (www.crcs.ugm.ac.id), where he teaches the academic study of religion, philosophy of science and several courses on religion and contemporary issues. He is also a member of the Board of Trustee of Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS-Yogya). In 2009 he was appointed as Indonesian Associate for UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations - Asia Pacific (associated with the Chair at Monash University, Australia).
He writes on subjects related to religion and contemporary issues, with special attention to religion and science in the Muslim world, and issues on the relation between religious communities and the state, focusing on Indonesia.
His publications include Science and Religion in the Post-colonial World: Interfaith Perspectives (editor, ATF Press, 2005) and a few other books in Indonesian language on science and religion. He contributed a chapter titled “Evolution and Creation in the Muslim World: Ambiguities and Politics of Identity” for a book commemorating 150 years of Charles Darwin’s Origins of Species (ATF Press, 2010). In 2008-2011 he led a research and educational project titled “Understanding and Healing After Natural Disaster: Scientific and Inter-religious Reflections”. The project focuses on scientific, theological and cultural interpretations of and responses to natural disasters by organizing a series of research projects, the results of which were be published in three books in Bahasa Indonesia, and one in English (in process).
He also is the Indonesian Regional Coordinator for the Pluralism Knowledge Programme (crcs.ugm.ac.id/pluralism), a collaboration between four academic centers and civil society organizations in Netherlands, India, Indonesia and Uganda. Under this program, he authored and edited several editions of the Annual Reports on Religious Life in Indonesia (since 2009), and a series of books on the practice of civic pluralism in Indonesia. His recent article includes “Defamation of Religion Law in Post-Reformasi Indonesia: Is Revision Possible?” (Australian Journal of Asian Law, 2013) and an entry on interfaith dialogue in Indonesia in the Oxford Islamic Studies Online (2011).
Honoraria Titles
Major Prizes
Religion, Philosophy & History Interests
Ethics, Islam, Philosophy of Religion
Publications
Science and Religion in the Post-colonial World: Interfaith Perspectives
Australasian Theological Forum Press 2005
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Religion-Postcolonial-World-Perspectives/dp/1920691340
Darwin and Evolution: Interfaith Perspective
ATF Press 2010
Editors:Jacques Arnould
http://atfpress.com/atf-theology/interface-journal/darwin-and-evolution-interfaith-perspective.html
Zygon
June 2012
Volume:47 (2)
Pages:354-366
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2012.01260.x/abstract
