Dr Zoe Knox

Prior to joining Leicester in 2006, I held posts at Rice University (Houston, USA) and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). I am the Treasurer of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES)—the country’s leading professional organisation for researchers of the region—and co-convenor of the BASEES Study Group on Religion and Spirituality in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 2013, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

My research centres on religious tolerance and intolerance in the modern world. This focus has led me to examine a range of pressing issues, from religious conscientious objectors in wartime America to the restrictions faced by religious minorities in Putin’s Russia.

A significant part of my work has focused on Jehovah’s Witnesses, contributing to the emergence of a new field of inquiry. My second book, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World, received a special mention of excellence from the European Academy of Religion. In parallel, I continue to explore religious dynamics in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.

In recent years, I have collaborated with Professor EB Baran to develop a new framework for assessing religious tolerance. We have urged scholars to consider the experiences of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a litmus test — what we call the ‘Jehovah’s Witness test’ — for evaluating how states and societies respect religious pluralism and difference more broadly.

In addition to several smaller writing projects, I am currently working on two books:

• Minority Religions and Religious Tolerance: The Jehovah’s Witness Test (forthcoming, 2025), co-edited with EB Baran, brings together contributions from scholars in Canada, Denmark, England, Mexico, Rwanda, South Korea and the United States, exploring developments in these countries and more, including Australia, Egypt, Greece, Malawi, Northern Ireland and Russia. The contributors examine how the Jehovah’s Witnesses' struggle for acceptance has shaped religious freedom and the legal protections enshrined in law in many modern states in the twenty-first century.
• What is Religious History? (under contract with Polity) examines the contours of religious history, a dynamic and burgeoning field of inquiry, by exploring how it emerged, developed, and continues to evolve. It also considers how historians of religion have incorporated new sources into their analysis, particularly through the lens of anthropological perspectives.

Books

Zoe Knox & Emily B. Baran (eds), Minority Religions and Religious Tolerance: The Jehovah’s Witness Test (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming October 2025)

Zoe Knox & J. K. deGraffenried (eds), Voices of the Voiceless: Religion, Communism, and the Keston Archive (Baylor University Press, 2019)

Zoe Knox, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World: From the 1870s to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

Zoe Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (Routledge, 2005)

Essays and Articles

Zoe Knox, ‘Keston College and Religious Samizdat: Documenting the Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union’ in J. K. deGraffenried, M. Long & X. Dennen (eds), Freedom of Conscience in (Post)Soviet Space: Legacies of Michael Bourdeaux and the Keston Archive (Cornell University Press, forthcoming August 2025)

Emily B. Baran & Zoe Knox, ‘Banning Religious Minorities: Does it Work?’ in Z. Knox & E. B. Baran (eds), Minority Religions and Religious Tolerance: The Jehovah’s Witness Test (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2025).

Zoe Knox, Marat Shterin & Daniel Nilsson DeHanas, ‘Studying Eastern Orthodoxy in the context of war in Ukraine’, Special Issue of Religion, State & Society 52, no. 4 (2024).

Zoe Knox & S. Rock, 'Orthodox Pilgrimage in Eastern Europe: An Introduction', Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 4, no. 1 (2021), pp. 13-20. 

Zoe Knox, 'Russian Religious Life in the Soviet Era' in R. Poole, G. Patterson & C. Emerson (eds), Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2020), pp. 60-75.

Zoe Knox, '"A Greater Danger than a Division of the German Army": Bible Students and Opposition to War in World War I America', Peace & Change, 44, no 2 (2019), pp. 207-243.

Zoe Knox, 'Jehovah's Witnesses as Extremists: The Russian State, Religious Pluralism, and Human Rights', The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 46 (2019), pp. 128-157.

Zoe Knox, 'Jehovah's Witnesses as Un-Americans? Scriptural Injunctions, Civil Liberties, and Patriotism', Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (November 2013), pp. 1081-1108.

Zoe Knox, 'Preaching the Kingdom Message: The Jehovah's Witnesses and Soviet Secularization' in Catherine Wanner (ed.), State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 244-271.

Zoe Knox, 'The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War: Interpretations of the End-Times, Superpower Conflict, and the Changing Geo-Political Order', Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 4 (December 2011), pp. 1018-1049.

Zoe Knox, 'Writing Witness History: The Historiography of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania', Journal of Religious History 35, no. 2 (2011), pp. 157-180.

I have supervised many PhD students to completion, several of whom are now working at universities and research institutions around the world. I would be delighted to hear from potential MPhil or PhD students interested in topics such as religious tolerance and intolerance in the modern world; religion, state, and society in Russia; religion and spirituality in the Soviet Union; or Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide.

As Director of Postgraduate Research in the School of History, Politics & International Relations, I have extensive experience mentoring PhD applicants on funding applications and advising on all aspects of doctoral study, both at the University of Leicester and beyond.

I bring 25 years of teaching experience to the classroom, having taught at five universities across three different countries.

At Leicester, my undergraduate teaching spans all year levels, covering topics such as modern European history, twentieth-century Russia, religion in the USSR, and religious history more broadly.

At the postgraduate level, I have taught on archives and research methodology in the Master's programme, and I have developed new courses, including Religious Conflict and Coexistence, which I teach alongside an early modernist colleague.

I have supervised both undergraduate and Master's dissertations across a range of subjects, including late Imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, as well as the history of religion in modern Europe.

Additionally, I have led courses for PhD students on how to design and deliver undergraduate modules, as well as how to approach undergraduate teaching more broadly.

The European Academy of Religion awarded my monograph Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Secular World a special mention of excellence in the senior scholar category of the Giuseppe Alberigo Award.