Dr Anna Strhan
Reader

Profile

Biography

• BA (University of Cambridge)
• MA (University of Sussex)
• PhD (Institute of Education, University of London)
• PhD (University of Kent)

Anna Strhan is Reader in the Department of Sociology. She is a cultural sociologist whose research and teaching interests lie broadly in questions about ethics, meaning, and values in everyday social life. Her research explores the relations between religion, secularism, morality, and the politics of belonging across different social spaces, using qualitative methods.

Strhan has published widely on these themes, including her books Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals (Oxford University Press), The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press), her co-authored book Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton University Press), and several co-edited volumes, including Where is the Good in the World? Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy (Berghahn) and Religion and the Global City (Bloomsbury). Her research has appeared in popular media outlets such as The Guardian and BBC Radio 4.

Together with Owen Abbott, Strhan co-founded and co-leads the Social Studies of Ethics, Morality, and Values Network. She also serves as Secretary for the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Within the Department, she leads the Culture, Values and Practices Research Cluster, and established and co-directs the Religion & Spirituality in Society & Culture Lab.

Departmental roles

• Culture, Values and Practices Research Cluster Lead
• Religion & Spirituality in Society & Culture Lab Co-Director

Research

Overview

Strhan’s research interests lie in cultural sociology, centred in particular on questions of morality, ethics and meaning, and religious and cultural change. Her research draws together approaches from anthropology and philosophy as well as sociology to explore how people shape and are shaped by particular cultural values, and how these are formed, experienced, negotiated, and contested in everyday life.

Her previous research examined how conservative evangelical Christians come to understand themselves as an alienated countercultural minority in British society, and the place of shame, guilt, and doubt in evangelical life. She has also conducted research looking at childhood and parenting across different evangelical churches. 

Strhan’s recent projects have focused on different aspects of childhood, education, and the politics of belonging, in relation to wider questions of cultural change. Her most recent book (co-authored with Rachael Shillitoe) Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton University Press), draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with children, parents, and teachers to explore how and why children are increasingly growing up non-religious in England, what they believe in and care about, and how their ways of knowing the world are created and sustained through particular spaces, places, and relations with others.

She has also recently led a Leverhulme Trust funded research project, Becoming Citizens of ‘Post-secular’ Britain: Religion in Primary School Life, together with Peter Hemming (Surrey), Sarah Neal (Sheffield), and Joanna Malone (York). This multi-sited qualitative study investigated the role of religion in how schools foster notions of citizenship and national identity, how children and their parents experience these processes, and the affective politics of belonging and values interwoven here.

Strhan is an experienced PhD supervisor, and welcomes inquiries from prospective students who use qualitative methods to explore issues that align with her broad research interests in the following areas: 

• Morality, ethics, and values in everyday social life
• Religious and cultural change
• Meaning-making in contemporary western societies
• Nonreligion, atheism, humanism, and non-traditional worldviews

Publications

Selected publications

For a detailed list of publications, please check my PURE page

Selected publications

Books:

• Strhan, A. and Shillitoe, R. (2025) Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Strhan, A. (2019) The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Strhan, A. (2015) Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
• Strhan, A. (2012) Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Edited volumes:

• Henig, D., Strhan, A. and Robbins, J. (2022) Where is the Good in the World? Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy New York: Berghahn.

• Garbin, D. and Strhan, A. (2017) Religion and the Global City London: Bloomsbury.

• Strhan, A., Parker, S. G., and Ridgely, S. (2017) The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood London: Bloomsbury.

• Lynch, G., Mitchell, J., and Strhan, A. (2011) Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader New York: Routledge.

Journal articles:

• Hemming, P.J., Strhan, A., Malone, J. and Neal, S. (2025) Schooling Citizenship and Character in a Therapeutic Society. The Sociological Review.
• Strhan, A., Malone, J., Hemming, P. and Neal, S. (2025) Affective Engagements with Religion and Citizenship in English Primary Schools British Journal of Sociology of Education.
• Strhan, A., Lee, L., and Shillitoe, R. (2024) Becoming Humanist: Worldview Formation and the Emergence of Atheist Britain Sociology of Religion 85(4): 454-481.
• Di Placido, M., Strhan, A., and Palmisano, S. (2022) Modern Postural Yoga and the Health-Spirituality-Neoliberalism Nexus. Fieldwork in Religion.
• Strhan, A. and Shillitoe, R. (2022) The Experiences of Non-Religious Children in Religious Education Journal of Religious Education.  
• Strhan, A. and Shillitoe, R. (2019) The Stickiness of Non-Religion? Intergenerational Transmission and the Formation of Non-Religious Identities in Childhood Sociology 53(6): 1094-1110.

Book chapters:

• Henig, D. and Strhan, A. (2022) Introduction: The Good between Social Theory and Philosophy. In D. Henig, A. Strhan and J. Robbins (eds) Where is the Good in the World? Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy. New York, Berghahn, 1-32.
• Strhan, A. (2022) ‘God isn’t a Communist’: Conservative Evangelicals, Money and Morality in London. In D. Henig, A. Strhan and J. Robbins (eds) Where is the Good in the World? Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy. New York, Berghahn, pp. 161-179.
• Strhan, A. (2017) Conservative Evangelical Listening Practices and the Embodiment of Faith. In L. van Liere, A.M. Korte and B. Becking (eds) Contesting Religious Identities. Leiden, Brill, pp. 240-260. 

Teaching

Other teaching

Strhan convenes the following modules related to her research interests:

• Inequality, Intersectionality and Resistance
• Spiritual Realities

She also contributes to postgraduate teaching on qualitative methods.