Mona Kanwal Sheikh is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, where she specialises in issues of religion and secularism in international relations. She is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Relevant publications include ‘Sacred Pillars of Violence: Findings from a Study of the Pakistani Taliban’ (Politics, Religion, Ideology, 2012), ‘How Does Religion Matter? Pathways to Religion in International Relations’ (Review of International Studies, 2012), ‘Western Secularisms: Variations in a Doctrine and its Practice’ (in Thinking International Relations Differently, eds Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney, Routledge, 2012) and ‘A Sociotheological Approach to Understanding Religious Violence’ (in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, eds Michael Jerryson, Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Oxford University Press, 2012).