Lawrence Sullivan

Biographical Information

"Lawrence Sullivan, PhD, is Fetzer Institute President and CEO. Regarded as an authority on the native religions of South America, Sullivan served as professor of both theology and anthropology at the University of Notre Dame from 2004-2010. From 1990-2003 he was director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and helped develop the concept and content for the Museum of World Religions in Taipei, Taiwan, which opened in 2001. Sullivan is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past president of the American Academy of Religions, and a former deputy secretary-general of the International Association for the History of Religions. He carried out his PhD studies in the comparative history of religions at the University of Chicago under the direction of Victor Turner, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Kitagawa and later taught on the faculty there. Sullivan’s book, Icanchu’s Drum, received best book awards from the Association of American Publishers and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is associate editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion, which received the Hawkins Prize and the Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association for the best work in any category of publishing. The Religions of Humanity book series, which Sullivan wrote with Julien Ries, received the 2000 Hans Christian Andersen Prize for the Best Series in Children’s Literature."