Writing as a Tool and Technique in the Study of Religion

PhD, Docent Tiina Mahlamäki is lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Turku, Finland. Her main research areas are esotericism, new age and new spirituality, nonreligion and gender, civil religion, and academic and creative writing. She has published four monographs of which the latest is narrative non-fiction about knitting addiction (2023). Together with other scholars she has edited five anthologies and a theme issue, for instance, on esotericism, religion and imagination, and new spiritualities.PhD, Docent Jaana Kouri works as a university-teacher in the Study of Religion at the University of Turku. She is specialized in the relationship between humans and their environment, especially modern European shamanism. Her standpoint is multidisciplinary and methodological, which comes up in her use and development of environmental ethnography, autoethnography, and creative writing as a method for producing experience-based knowledge. She has co-edited several books in Finnish, and one in English. She has published three monographs of which the latest is narrative non-fiction about her own shamanic path (2024).

• Chapter1. Introduction: Writing as a Tool and Technology.- Chapter 2. Knowledges, Creativity, and Imagination in Research.- Chapter 3 Ethnography.- Chapter 4 Fiction and Nonfiction.- Chapter 5 Practices of Writing.- Chapter 6. Creative Writing Exercises.- Chapter 7. Conclusion.