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• Professor Delmer Brown (UC Berkeley History, emeritus) is the executive director of the Center for Shinto Studies.  He is currently Adjunct Professor of Shinto at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley.   Professor Brown is co-translator of "Studies in Shinto Thought" by Muraoka Tsunetsu, and of the "Gukansho" by Jien. He has authored two chapters and the Introduction of The Cambridge History of Japan Vol. 1 and is now completing a book-length study of "Amaterasu in the History of Japan", as well as teaching a seminar on Shinto at Starr King Theological Center, part of the Pacific School of Religion at U.C. Berkeley.
  
  
• Professor Inoue Nobutaka (Kokugakuin University, Tokyo) is a senior professor at the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics at Kokugakuin University.  His recent publications include "An Interpretation of the New Religions" (Shin-shukyo no kaidoku) and "The Formation of Sectarian Shinto." He served as the editor-in-chief for the compilation of the "Shinto Jiten," an encyclopedic dictionary of Shinto deities, shrines, ritual practices, and their place within Japanese society and culture.
  
  
• Professor George Williams (California State University, Chico): Professor of Religious Studies and Asian Studies at California State University, Chico.  He is a specialist in interfaith dialogue and liberating (liberal) religion.  He is a pioneer of the sub-discipline of experiential phenomenology as well as interactive, digital learning (internet, CD-rom, video, etc.). 
  
    
• Mr. Norman Havens is the Permanent Lecturer at the Institute of Japanese Culture and Classics at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo.   A specialist on pilgrimage and the Ise-mairi phenomenon of the 17th and 18th centuries, he has translated a wide variety of texts into English. As the principal translator for the Institute of Japanese Culture and Classics, he has to his credit works on Japanese festivals, new religions, and pilgrimage (forthcoming).
  
  
• Professor John Nelson (University of Texas at Austin) has done extensive ethnographic fieldwork at Shinto shrines in Japan.  He is the author of the 1996 book A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine (Univ. of Washington Press), producer of a documentary film titled "Japan's Rituals of Remembrance: 50 Years after the Pacific War," and has a forthcoming book from the University of Hawai'i Press on Kyoto's Kamowake Ikazuchi Jinja. 
  
  
• Rev. Handa Shigeru is chief priest at Ueno Tenmangu Jinja in Nagoya.  He is the primary author and programmer of the 1995 Shinto Dictionary CD-rom, distributed by the American Academy of Religion's Division of Electronic Publications.  In addition to his shrine responsibilities, he serves as a computer and software consultant to Fujitsu Corporation and Apple, Japan.
  
      
• Professor Lewis Lancaster is a Professor of East Asian Languages, University of California at Berkeley, head of Electronic Publications for the American Academy of Religion, Chair of the Electronic Resources Development Work Group for Association of Asian Studies, and member of the Board of Directors for Pleroma Institute which is currently working on an interdisciplinary database titled "The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative."

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Updated 14-July-99