Linda Woodhead

Professor Linda Woodhead MBE
Woodhead in 2011
Born	1964 (age 52–53)
Academic background
Education	Bishop Fox's School Richard Huish College, Taunton
Alma mater	Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline	Religious studies
Sub discipline	Christian theology Sociology of religion Comparative religion
Institutions	Ripon College Cuddesdon Lancaster University

Linda Woodhead MBE (born 1964) is a British academic specialising in the sociology of religion. She is best known for her work on religious change since the 1980s, and for initiating public debates about faith. She has been described by Matthew Taylor, head of the Royal Society of Arts, as "one of the world’s leading experts on religion". Since 2006, she has been Professor of Sociology of Religion in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. From 2007 to 2012, she was director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme.

Woodhead grew up in rural Somerset. She attended Bishop Fox’s comprehensive school and Richard Huish Sixth Form College in Taunton. She studied Theology and Religious Studies at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and was awarded Double First Class Honours in 1985, receiving the MA by conversion in 1989. Woodhead undertook her first post as Tutor in Doctrine and Ethics at Ripon College Cuddesdon Oxford (1988–1992). In 1992, she moved to Lancaster University. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Uppsala University in 2009 and appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to higher education. Woodhead is married and lives in Glasgow.