Having studied at universities in Manchester, Chicago, Liverpool and Oxford, Andrew Dawson holds degrees in the study of religion and the social sciences. Research interests centre upon religion and late-modern society, with particular focus upon South America and Brazil. He has published a book, articles, chapters, and encyclopaedia pieces on religion and society in Brazil and South America. For example, ’The Gnostic Church of Brazil: Contemporary Neo-esotericism in Late-Modern Perspective’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, vol.1 (2005); ’South American Indigenous Religions’ in C.H. Partridge (ed.) Lion Handbook of Religions (London: Lion, 2004); ’Mystical Experience as Universal Connectedness: Leonardo Boff’s trans-cultural phenomenology’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol.19, no.2 (2004); The Emergence and Impact of the Base Ecclesial Community and Liberative Theological Discourse in Brazil (Bethesda: University Press of America, 1998).