UK Sikh Studies Academic Invited To The Royal Garden Party

:dateline:A UK based British Sikh academic, Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar, FHEA, has been invited to the Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Queen�s birthday. �Dr Takhar, Senior Lecturer and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, has been recognised for her research and publications in the area of Sikh Studies.

Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. �Her 2005 book on Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups amongst Sikhs (Ashgate) is used as a key text in a number of Religious Studies courses at Higher Educational institutions around the world. Dr Takhar has also contributed to the Oxford Handbook on Sikh Studies (2014) as well as numerous other academic publications on the Sikhs.� Her work and research on the Ravidassia community is also recognised worldwide and she has presented her research in Universities across the world. She is an Editorial Board member of the peer reviewed Journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory, and also the author of �Trajectories of a distinct identity among the Ravidassias in Britain� published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion.�

Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is Associate Editor for a Special Issue of the peer reviewed Journal Contemporary South Asia, published by Routledge. The focus of this Special Issue is Caste: Contemporary Dynamics in South Asia and Beyond. �Dr Takhar has also produced textbooks and a Teacher�s guide for the OCR GCSE syllabus on Philosophy and Ethics, used in secondary schools across Britain. She has written numerous educational resources for REToday Publications, a national resource for teaching Religious Education across schools and colleges in the UK.�

She has also published on issues relating to the caste system and how this affects faith communities in the South Asian diaspora. Her research also explores religious and political activism within the British Sikh community. Dr Takhar�s research is not restricted to academia, it has been disseminated amongst the wider general public to whom the themes are particularly relevant.� To this end, she is a regular participant on discussion programmes and panels on the Sikh media channels. She has regularly contributed to the British Sikh Report and is also one of the authors of the Sikh Manifesto, produced by the Sikh Network (UK) in preparation for the 2015 British Parliament elections.�

Dr Takhar has been involved in the set-up of two Sikh Free Schools in Wolverhampton and Derby. She is also a tutor on the Faith and Leadership Programme at the London School of Economics (LSE).� Dr Takhar is also involved in Interfaith Dialogue and is a Board Member of the Inter Faith Wolverhampton, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in November 2014 with a visit from Prince Charles.