Click on the headings below to find out more information

One of the first graduate programs in Religious Studies in Canada (established in 1964),  McMaster University has been a leading center for the scholarly study of religion for more than four decades.  The Department has three graduate fields (Asian, Biblical and Western) and research is conducted in a range of topics and traditions, time periods and cultures, employing a wide variety of approaches: textual, ethnographic, historical, philosophical, theological, philological.  While the faculty and areas of research expertise have changed somewhat over the years, the Department’s commitment to the open, critical, and multidisciplinary study of religion—past and present, East and West, theoretical and practical—remains passionate and strong.

There are currently about 50 graduate students enrolled in the department, and 14 professors active in graduate supervision. The department has had enviable success in placing its Ph.D. graduates. Of the more than 40 students who have received the Ph.D. since 1996, approximately 60% have moved on to hold full-time academic positions, and another 20% to part-time teaching.

To find out more, please read our online material or use the links below to get more details on our graduate programme and graduate studies in general:

• Download Graduate Handbook 2011-12 (PDF)
  The Handbook is in PDF file format. To view this PDF file, you require Adobe Acrobat Reader program installed on your computer. Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free download from from Adobe.
• School of Graduate Studies
• Questions? Click here      
• Online Application

McMaster University is situated in Hamilton, Ontario at the western tip of Lake Ontario, sixty kilometers southwest of Toronto, and sixty kilometers northwest of Niagara Falls.

Incorporated in 1887 under the terms of an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, the University was the outgrowth of two colleges which had undertaken educational work in Ontario since the 1830s. In 1957 the Act underwent major revisions and McMaster University is now one of fourteen private, but provincially funded, universities in the Province of Ontario.

The University has approximately 20,400 full-time undergraduate students (and another 3,000 part-time) and 2,890 full-and part-time graduate students. The University has emphasized research in medicine, science and some areas of the arts and has exceptional laboratory facilities and a research library including, among other collections, the papers of Bertrand Russell.

The McMaster University Library System is one of the finest research libraries in Canada. Present holdings include over 1.7 million volumes. Mills Memorial Library contains the Humanities and Social Sciences collection. Religious Studies has historically had a high priority in the acquisitions policies of the University Librarians, and the library has comprehensive holdings in those areas in which the department conducts doctoral programmes. In addition, Mills Library operates an efficient inter-library loan system, and members of the McMaster community have access to other Ontario university libraries through the Inter-University Borrowing Project of the Ontario Council of University Libraries.