Professor Kristin Aune

  • Visiting Professor of Religion and Higher Education
Kristin Aune

Professor Aune is Senior Research Fellow at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. She has taught sociology at several universities and been a visiting fellow at Uppsala University, Grinnell College, Iowa, and Deakin University.

Professor Aune has been working with 91²Ö¿â since 2022 advising on the university’s provision for religious students and staff. As a result, a working group was set up for interfaith staff and students, to include progressing recommendations of her interfaith and worldview research, with a focus on both staff and students. The impact of Professor Aune’s work advising 91²Ö¿â also includes the launch of the National Higher Education Chaplaincy Network in March 2024.  

In addition to pioneering work on religion and gender, Professor Aune’s research expertise is in religion and higher education. She has conducted projects on this area funded by the AHRC and ESRC, the Office for Students, the Church Universities Fund, the Sir Halley Stewart Trust and Westhill Endowment. Her collaborative research, conducted principally with colleagues from Durham University, the Woolf Institute, Coventry University, North Carolina State University and The Ohio State University, has uncovered how universities can support religious students and create conditions for good interfaith relations. 

  • Fryer, T., Guest, M., Aune, K. & Peacock, L. (2026), ‘How does higher education influence attitudes to Muslims? Examining mechanisms that reduce prejudice within the UK’s universities’, British Journal of Sociology, 1-11.
  • Bowling, R., Staples, B. A., Mayhew, M., Rockenbach, A., Guest, M., Aune, K. & Peacock, L. (2026), ‘Comparisons across higher education contexts: Findings from collaboratively adapting an interfaith diversity study’, Comparative Education Review 70(1): 43-68.
  • Aune, K., Fryer, T., Peacock, L. and Guest, M. (2026) ‘Multi-faith in policy only? Religion and belief inequalities at UK Universities since the Equality Act’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 47(3): 423–443.
  • Aune, K., Peacock, L., Rockenbach, A., Guest, M. and Mayhew, M. (2025) ‘How can universities support students’ interfaith learning? Findings from a longitudinal study of students in the UK’, Higher Education,
  • Aune, K., Iqbal, H., Peacock, L. & Cheruvallil-Contractor, S. (2025)
  • Aune, K., Perfect, S. and Ryan, B. (2024) ‘Building bridges or holy huddles? Student religious organizations in British universities’, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 18(5): 726-739.
  • Barnes, R. and Aune, K. (2024) ‘Christianity and domestic abuse’ in Burton, M., Bettinson, V., Richardson, K. & Speed, A. (eds.), . Edward Elgar
  • Aune, K., Peacock, L., Guest, M. and Law, J. (2023) ‘University Chaplaincy as Relational Presence: Navigating Understandings of Good and Effective Chaplaincy in UK Universities’, Journal of College and Character 24(3): 197-216.