Rafael Ruiz Andrés is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the Complutense University of Madrid. He obtained his PhD (with international mention and honours) in Sciences of Religions from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in 2019. His PhD thesis received the national award for doctoral theses from the Spanish Society of Sciences of Religions. He was a pre-doctoral researcher (2015-2019) at the Institute of Sciences of Religions of the Complutense University of Madrid and collaborated with different public and private entities, notably the madri+d Knowledge Foundation of the Region of Madrid He is the secretary of 'Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones. Throughout his academic career, he has participated in several research groups and projects, was part of the Europaeum Scholarship Programme (2018-2019), coordinated by the University of Oxford, of the KAICIID International Fellowship Programme (2021) on intercultural and interreligious dialogue and researched at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.
His research interests revolve around the historical sociology of secularisation, religious metamorphoses in the contemporary world, interreligious dialogue and post-secularisation, topics on which he has participated in national and international conferences, and has published articles in indexed journals, book chapters and the book "La secularización en España" (Editorial Cátedra, forthcoming in early 2022).
His main research interests include:
- Sociology of religions
- Historical sociology of secularisation
- Religious metamorphoses in the contemporary world
- Interreligious/intercultural dialogue
- Sociology of postsecularisation
- Religion and social structure
Selected publications:
- (2022). La secularización en España. Madrid: Cátedra
- (2021). “La crisis de los sacerdotes y religiosos (1965-1972): reflejo y factor del proceso de secularización en España”. Hispania Sacra, 73(147), 259–271. https://doi.org/10.3989/hs.2021.022
- (2021). “Christianity in Current Western Europe: a Religious Memory in a Secular Continent” En Repensar el pasado: La memoria (trans)cultural europea, Marta Fernández Bueno y Johanna Vollmeyer (eds.), pp. 133-145. Madrid: Dykinson.
- (2019). “Spain and Catholicism: a Work-in-Progress Relationship. Church Transformations in an Increasingly Secular Society and State (1939-2018)”. En Religion and State in Secular Europe Today. Theoretical Perspectives and Case Studies (ANL-79), Jelle Creemers y Hans Geybels (eds.). Leuven: Peeters.
- “Secular Stories: Historical Sociology, Narrative Secularization, and the Spanish Case of Religious Transformation (1960–2019)”. Journal of Contemporary Religion [próxima publicación].