Background
He was born in January 1945 in Birmingham, England.
He was born in January 1945 in Birmingham, England.
Turner attended Harborne Collegiate School for Boys and George Dixon Grammar School.
Turner has held university appointments in England, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Holland, Singapore and the United States. He was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge (1998–2005) and Research Team Leader for the Religion Cluster at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2005–2008). Turner is currently the Presidential Professor of Sociology and Director of the Committee on Religion at The City University of New York, and Director of the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society at the Australian Catholic University.
He went on to the University of Leeds, where he completed a first class honours degree in Sociology in 1966.
He has received several honorary degrees recognising his contributions to Sociology: Doctor of Letters at Flinders University in 1987, Master of Arts at the University of Cambridge in 2002 and Doctor of Letters at the University of Cambridge in 2009. Professor Turner"s research interests include globalisation and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies.
He is one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion. He has also devoted significant attention to sociological theory, the study of human rights, and the sociology of the body.
He is the founding editor of the journals: Body & Society (with Mike Featherstone), Citizenship Studies, and Journal of Classical Sociology (with John O"Neill).
He is also faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, Research Associate, GEMASS at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Member of the American Sociological Research Association.