Jon Bialecki

Jon Bialecki is a Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. With a Ph.D. completed in 2009, his academic work focuses on the anthropology of religion, particularly American Charismatic and Evangelical movements, ontology, temporality, and religious transhumanism.

His research interests include:

• Anthropology of Religion
• Anthropology of the Subject
• Ontology and Temporality
• Religious Language Ideology
• Religious Transhumanism

Bialecki's scholarly work explores how religious communities conceptualize human difference, time, and the supernatural. His research on evangelical ethno-anthropology identifies three modes through which evangelicals organize human difference: as differing plateaus of supernatural charge, as relationships, and as ethnos (or 'people'). He has made significant contributions to understanding the relationship between evangelical Christianity and political engagement in the United States, particularly regarding the 2016 presidential election.

His publications reveal a consistent interest in how religious movements navigate variation while maintaining coherence. Bialecki's work on transhumanism explores the connections between religious thought and technological futurism, particularly in Mormon transhumanist communities, where speculation about human futures functions as accounts of possible human pasts.

Among his notable achievements is winning the American Ethnological Society's Sharon Stephens Prize for his book 'A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement.' The prize committee described it as 'a masterful analytical contribution to the anthropology of Christianity.'

Bialecki has been active in academic blogging and digital scholarship, contributing to platforms like Platypus (The CASTAC Blog) and maintaining his own academic blog where he discusses theoretical developments in anthropology and related fields. He has also engaged with public scholarship through interviews with outlets like the Pacific Standard.