Professor David Goa

Professor in the Religious Studies and Philosophy programs at the University of Alberta, The King’s University, Saint Stephen’s College, and Newman Theological College in Canada; areas of research are art, Christian faith and modernity, and the engagement of ultimate questions in a “post-Christian” age.

David Goa is the founding Director (serving from 2003-2016) of the Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, Augustana Campus, University of Alberta — Canada’s first Centre in a public university devoted to this subject. He studied philosophy and the history of religions in Chicago and teaches in the Religious Studies and Philosophy programs at the University of Alberta, The King’s University, Saint Stephen’s College, and Newman Theological College as well as through the Ephesus Project teaching in various prisons. His primary areas of research are art, Christian faith and modernity, and the engagement of ultimate questions in a “post-Christian” age.

Dr. Goa is the author of more than twenty books, including Mantra: Hearing the Divine in India and America, Anno Domini: Jesus Through the Centuries, A Regard for Creation, and The Christian Responsibility to Muslims. He has written numerous articles on religious tradition and modern culture, on culture and the civil life, and on museums as public institutions in the service of cultural communities and modern civil society. Dr. Goa also serves on the editorial advisory boards of several scholarly journals, including the international Material Religion: Journal of Object, Art and Belief, the Canadian Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, and the Turkish Marife, the Turkish Journal of Religious Studies and Katre, the International Journal of Said Nursi Studies.