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Prof Bettina E. Schmidt is a cultural anthropologist and currently professor in study of religions at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the director of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre. She received her doctorate and post-doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany. Previously she worked at Marburg University, Oxford University and Bangor University. She was also visiting professor at the City University of New York and visiting scholar at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Prof Schmidt is the current President of the British Association for the Study of Religions. She has published extensively on Caribbean and Latin American religions, religious experience, anthropology of religion, identity, cultural theories, gender, and migration. Her main fieldwork has been conducted in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, New York City, and Brazil. She is the author of Spirit and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experiences (2016, Bloomsbury), Caribbean Diaspora in the USA: Diversity of Caribbean Religions in New York City (2008, Ashgate), Einführung in die Religionsethnologie (2008, Reimer Verlag Berlin), and co-editor of Spirit Possession and Trance: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2010, Continuum), and of Handbook of Contemporary Brazilian Religions (2016, Brill).