Zainal Abidin Bagir
Zainal Abidin Bagir is based at the Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and is the director of the PhD Program in Inter-religious Studies at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies, a consortium of UGM, Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, and Duta Wacana Christian University in Yogyakarta. His two main interests are religious freedom (of belief and practice) and religion and ecology. He recently convened a roundtable on emerging discourses on freedom of religion in Indonesia (published in the journal Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology in 2023). On the subject of religion and ecology, he has recently coedited a book with Michael Northcott and Frans Wijsen titled Varieties of Religion and Ecology: Dispatches from Indonesia (LIT-Verlag, 2021).
Beyond academic work, Dr. Abidin Bagir has been active in working with civil-society practitioners. He has coordinated the Freedom of Religion or Belief Fellowship for university lecturers annually since 2019. He has been also involved in collective advocacy to revoke or revise the Indonesian blasphemy law and articles related to religion in the new Indonesian Criminal Code.
Featured Work: Indonesian Pluralities, a documentary film project (funded by the Luce Foundation) with an accompanying coedited book, Indonesian Pluralities: Islam, Citizenship, and Democracy
Upcoming Projects: Books on religious freedom and conflict transformation (in Bahasa Indonesia, 2024) and on “Green Islam” in Indonesia (Leiden University Press, 2025).
