Dr Alastair Lockhart
Associate Supervisor
Email: asl21@cam.ac.uk
Alastair is an Associate Supervisor for postgraduate supervision at Westcott House with expertise in the following areas:
- 20th Century Religious Innovation/Non-Traditional Religion
- Psychology and religion
- Social sciences and religion
- Apocalypticism and millenarianism
- War and religion
He is a Fellow of Churchill College and Quondam Fellow and Director of Studies for Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. Alongside these roles, Alastair is visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London.
Alastair’s research interests include the 20th and contemporary history of religion with a focus on new and non-mainstream religions, the psychological and social scientific study of religion, and apocalyptic and millenarian movements. He is also interested in religion in relation to war and to technology.
Alastair is editor of the online Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements and convenor for the annual conference of the International Network for the Study of War and Religion in the Modern World. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the British Association for the Study of Religions.
Publications
Lockhart, Alastair (2024) ‘A Godless Apocalypse and the Atom Bombs: Ronald Knox and a New Concept of World Ending’ in Jenny Stümer, Michael Dunn and David Eisler (eds.) Worlds Ending. Ending Worlds. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 37-55.
DiTommaso, Lorenzo, James Crossley, Alastair Lockhart and Rachel Wagner (eds). (2024) End-Game: Apocalyptic Video Games, Contemporary Society, and Digital Media Culture. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Lockhart, Alastair (2024) ‘The HADDs and the HADD-nots: Mystical Experiences and Religion in Evolution’ in Religion, Brain and Behavior 14(1): 81-85.
Lockhart, Alastair (2020) ‘New Religious Movements and Quasi-religion: Cognitive Science of Religion at the Margins’ in Archive for the Psychology of Religion / Archiv für Religionspsychologie 42(1): 101-122.
Lockhart, Alastair (2020) ‘Demise and Persistence: Religion after the Loss of “Direct Divine Control” in the Panacea Society’ in Michael Stausberg, Stuart A. Wright and Carole M. Cusack (eds.) The Demise of Religion: How Religions End, Die, or Dissipate. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 83-96.
Williams, Ryan J., Fraser Watts, & Alastair Lockhart (2020) ‘Health Help-Seeking Behaviour in Spiritual Healing Practice: Records from the Panacea Society’s Healing Department, 1924–1997′ in Journal of Religion and Health 61: 2417–2432.
Lockhart, Alastair (2020) ‘Bishop William Temple and the Psychologists’ in Russell Re Manning (ed.) Mutual Enrichment between Psychology and Theology. Abingdon UK; New York NY: Routledge. pp. 35-46.
Lockhart, Alastair (2020) ‘Holy Places and Religious Language in New Religious Movements’ in New Blackfriars 101(1092): 163-181.
Lockhart, Alastair (2019) Personal Religion and Spiritual Healing: The Panacea Society in the Twentieth Century. State University of New York Press.
Lockhart, Alastair (2019) ‘A Bud from the Tree of Life: William McDougall’s Response to Freud’ in History and Philosophy of Psychology 20(1): 28-33.
Lockhart, Alastair (2017) ‘A Southcottian Healing Panacea, 1924-2012’ in J. Shaw and P. Lockley (eds.) The History of a Modern Millennial Movement: The Southcottians. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 186-202.
Lockhart, Alastair (2015) ‘Religious and Spiritual Mobility in Britain: The Panacea Society and Other Movements in the Twentieth Century’ in Contemporary British History 29(2): 155-178.
Lockhart, Alastair (2013) ‘Heterodox Healing and Alternative Religion in the 20th Century: An English Spiritual Healing Practice in Finland’ in Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran vuosikirja 2013. Helsinki: Suomen Kirkkohistoriallinen Seura/Societas Historiae Ecclesiasticae Fennica. pp. 74-97.
Lockhart, Alastair (2012) ‘The “Para-Freudians”: A Project for a Spiritualized Psychoanalysis in Early Twentieth Century Britain’ in D. Henderson (ed.) Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 2-19.
Lockhart, Alastair (2010) ‘The “Parson’s Clinic”: Religion and Psychology at the Interwar Tavistock Clinic’ in History and Philosophy of Psychology 12(2): 11-23.