Katharine Buljan is a Sydney-based scholar and visual artist/animator. She was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2007 and has completed a Master of Animation at the University of Technology, Sydney (2008) and a Master of Arts (Honours) at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean in 1998. She holds Diploma in Painting (1989-1993) from the Accademia di Belle Arti (Rome). Katharine has been a sessional/guest lecturer at the universities in Sydney and at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She has published in the area of animation and visual arts.
Katharine has exhibited her work in Australia, Italy, Hong Kong and Sweden, and has received a number of art prizes. In 2013, she was selected as a finalist for the 62nd Blake Prize for Religious Art. Her main research interest is link between art/animation and world religions, spiritualities and mythologies. This research also inspires her art practice.
Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. She trained as a medievalist. Since the late 1990s she has taught in contemporary religious trends, publishing on pilgrimage and tourism, modern Pagan religions, new religious movements, and religion and popular culture. She is the author of The Essence of Buddhism (Lansdowne, 2001), Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010), and The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), 2011. She has published widely in edited volumes and scholarly journals, and is the editor (with Christopher Hartney) of Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honour of Garry W. Trompf (Brill, 2010) and (with Alex Norman) of Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (Brill, 2012). With Christopher Hartney (University of Sydney) she is editor of the Journal of Religious History(Wiley) and with Liselotte Frisk (Dalarna University) she is editor of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (Equinox). She serves on the Editorial Boards of the journal Literature & Aesthetics, the Sophia Monograph Series (Springer), and the Histories of the Sacred and Secular monograph series (Palgrave Macmillan).