sikhpride

Description

1. Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is Senior Lecturer and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, and also a a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
2. Her 2005 book on Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups amongst Sikhs (Ashgate) is used as a key text in a number of Religious Studies courses at Universities around the world.
3. Dr Takhar has written numerous academic publications on the Sikhs, including her research in the Oxford Handbook on Sikh Studies (2014).
4. Her publications and research on the Ravidassia community is recognised worldwide and she has presented her work in Universities across the world.
5. She is an Editorial Board member of the peer reviewed Journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory, and also the author of “Trajectories of a distinct identity among the Ravidassias in Britain” published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion.
6. Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is Associate Editor for a Special Issue of the peer reviewed Journal Contemporary South Asia, published by Routledge.
7. The focus of this Special Issue is Caste: Contemporary Dynamics in South Asia and Beyond.
8. Dr Takhar has also produced textbooks and a Teacher’s guide for the OCR GCSE syllabus on Philosophy and Ethics, used in secondary schools across Britain.
9. She has written numerous educational resources for REToday Publications, a national resource for teaching Religious Education across schools and colleges in the UK. She has also published on issues relating to the caste system and how this affects faith communities in the South Asian diaspora, particularly Sikhs and Punjabi Dalits.
10. Her research also explores religious and political activism within the British Sikh community.
11. Dr Takhar’s research is not restricted to academia, it has been disseminated amongst the wider general public to whom the themes are particularly relevant.
12. To this end, she is a regular participant on discussion programmes and panels in the media. She has regularly contributed to the British Sikh Report and is also one of the co-authors of the Sikh Manifesto, produced by the Sikh Network (UK).
13. Dr Takhar has been involved in the set-up of two Sikh Free Schools in Wolverhampton and Derby. She is also a tutor on the Faith and Leadership Programme at the London School of Economics (LSE). Dr Takhar is also involved in Interfaith Dialogue and is a Board Member of the Inter Faith Wolverhampton.