On 1st of April 2015 Alexander-Kenneth Nagel will join the University of Göttingen as Professor for Religious Studies (with particular emphasis on the social scientific study of religion). During the last years he was Professor for the Social Scientific Study of Religion at the Center for Religious Studies at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Previously, Nagel worked as reseacher at the Institute for Empirical and Applied Sociology and in the Collaborative Research Center "Transformations of the State", University of Bremen.

His teaching focuses on current issues and approaches of the social scientific study of religion including religious migrant organizations and their local and transnational networks, religious pluralization and religious encounter in modern immigration societies as well as methodological and conceptual matters of the empirical investigation and comparison of religions.

Nagel´s research has concentrated on the interplay between religious pluralization, the establishment and transformation of religious migrant organizations and inter- as well as intra-religious conflict and encounter. He supervised a junior research group on the civic potentials of religious migrant communities which was funded by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research of North Rhine-Westphalia (2009-2014). In another research project on "Interreligious activities and Urban Governance", funded by the Mercator Research Center Ruhr (2012-2013), Nagel investigated the role of interfaith bodies in the governance of religious diversity in two cities of the German Ruhr-Area. His previous research interests include modern apocalypticism and faith-based organizations as social service providers.

Currently, Nagel is preparing research projects on religious narratives of migration as a symbolical resource for community formation in the country of residence. Here, particular emphasis will be given to "experienced minorities", i.e. groups who already belonged to a religious or ethnic minority in the country of departure.