P
rofessor James Crossley, in association with the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield, has commenced a website to examine what goes on at the intersection of religion and media.
The Religion and the Media blog “will be dedicated to updates, news and analysis of a wide range of issues relating to religion and the media”. The critique of the media’s treatment of religion is especially welcome in a country like the U.K., where liberal sneering or feel-good reductionism usually substitutes for informed commentary or analysis.
In Religion and the Media’s inaugural post, from 24 January 2012, James Crossley explains:
This new blog is going to be dedicated to all things media and religion, usually with some connection to issues relating to media freedom, linked as it is with the Centre for Freedom of Media at the University of Sheffield. In addition to news and updates, there will be regular analysis from a variety of people both linked to the Centre in someway and guest bloggers.
Professor James Crossley, International Biblical Scholar, Vienna 2007
James Crossley was recently appointed to a Chair in the Biblical Studies Department at the University of Sheffield. His title of Professor of Bible, Culture and Politics reflects his ongoing interest in the reception and effect of the Bible in society, in particular in late capitalism and under the global impact of neoliberalism. Among the books which he has authored or edited that reflect this particular research interest are Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (BibleWorld; Sheffield: Equinox, 2008), Judaism, Jewish Identities and the Gospel Tradition: Essays in Honour of Maurice Casey (BibleWorld; Sheffield: Equinox, 2010); and Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism: Quests, Scholarship and Ideology (BibleWorld; Sheffield: Equinox, forthcoming May 2012). Crossley also publishes widely in New Testament studies, including an important recent philological contribution concerning the semantic range of things able to be done with the human “fist”, in “Halakah and Mark 7.3: ‘with the hand in the shape of a fist'” (New Testament Studies 58 (2012), 57-68).
The Dunedin School 
Which one is that – Estonia? Person captured in photo image is either an intruder or James in Estonia where beer was too dear. No international biblical scholar drinks water alone – and the fags? James? No oh no not James. That’s just some Mediterranean hippie. :-)
Vienna, 2007. Apparently, Sigmund Freud had once sat in the very same chair.
I wondered if it was Vienna – I was there too. I think there was a bar set up there. In fact I had coffee there with James and Chessie and John and people… or was it gin? Bollocks on Freud’s chair. I sat in the very chair Mozart sat on when he composed his fugues. It was very rickety because he kept bouncing around on it…