Anna Strhan
Professor

Profile

Biography

Anna Strhan is a Professor 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.

Anna has published widely on these themes. Her books include 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), and her co-authored book Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton University Press). She has also co-edited several 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 been featured in popular media outlets such as The Guardian and BBC Radio 4.

Within the Department, she leads the Culture, Values and Practices Research Cluster, and collaborates with an active group of postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers focusing on religion, spirituality, media, and culture in contemporary societies. 

Departmental Roles

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

Research

Overview

Anna’s research interests lie in cultural sociology, centring on questions of morality, ethics, and meaning, and cultural and religious change. Her work draws together approaches from sociology, anthropology, and philosophy 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 has examined the processes through which conservative evangelical Christians come to understand themselves as ‘aliens and strangers’ in the world. She has also conducted ethnographic research exploring childhood and parenting across different evangelical churches.

Anna’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 recent co-authored book Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton University Press) draws on ethnographic fieldwork 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 shaped 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, alongside Peter Hemming (Surrey), Sarah Neal (Sheffield), and Joanna Malone (York). This multi-sited qualitative study investigated how schools foster notions of citizenship and national identity, how children and their parents experience these processes, and the affective politics of belonging, religion, and values interwoven here. Anna is currently completing a co-authored book based on this research, entitled Making Good Citizens: Values, Religion, and the Politics of Belonging in Everyday School Worlds.

Publications

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.

Journal articles

• 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.

Teaching

Overview

Anna’s teaching at undergraduate level focuses on social inequalities, religion, and spirituality. She also contributes to postgraduate teaching on qualitative methods.

Supervision

Anna is an experienced PhD supervisor and welcomes inquiries from prospective postgraduate 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
• Meaning-making in contemporary western societies
• Nonreligion, atheism, humanism, and non-traditional worldviews
• Religious, spiritual, and cultural change

Current and past supervisees

• Mavjigul Dushanbieva. Female Custodians of Faith.  Second supervisor. Sept 2025-present. 
• Ruth Vassilas. Reconstruing the Self, the Social and the Sacred After Spiritually Transformative Experiences. First supervisor. 2023-present. 
• Alex Arthur-Hastie. Casting the Self: Exploring the shifting identities, communities and values of witches in contemporary Britain. Co-supervisor. Awarded 2026.
• Yinan Zhang. Being a Good Mother: Experiences of Motherhood in Early Years of Childrearing in Urban China. Co-supervisor. Awarded 2023.
• Zainab Maqbool. Exploring the lived experiences of mixed ethnic women with a kin connection to Islam through one parent. ESRC-funded. Co-supervisor. Awarded 2022. 
• Rob Barward-Symmons. Becoming Evangelical: Ritual Process and Religious Formation in a Christian Youth Group. AHRC-funded. External Supervisor. Awarded 2020.
• Rachael Shillitoe. Collective Worship: Foregrounding the Child’s Perspective. Leverhulme Trust-funded. External Supervisor. Awarded 2018.
• Ruth Sheldon. Ordinary Ethics and Democratic Life: Palestine-Israel in British Universities. AHRC-funded. Co-Supervisor. Awarded 2013.

External Activity

Overview

Anna co-founded and co-leads the Social Studies of Ethics, Morality, and Values Network. She also currently serves as Secretary for the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and as an advisory board member on a number of external research projects.

Anna enjoys communicating her research in public and civil society settings. You can listen to a recent New Books Network podcast discussing her book Growing Up Godless.