Dr. Robert M. Geraci

Robert M. Geraci, Ph.D. is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College.
 
Robert studies the power of religion in contemporary culture, particularly with regard to the interaction between religion and technology. Other academic interests include the history and anthropology of science and the relationship between religion, science, and literature.
 
His past research focused upon the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and religion (primarily the Singularity, mind uploading, & sentient machines, but also Shinto and Buddhist ideas as they relate to the development of Japanese robotics). He is the author of Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality (Oxford 2010) and Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life (Oxford 2014) in addition to many academic and popular essays on religion, science, and technology.
 
Robert was Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation award (#1144028) investigating meaningful experiences in virtual worlds and he was Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher in 2012–13, during which time he spent five months as Visiting Scholar at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. His current research projects involve writing about the interaction of religion and culture in Indian scientific and engineering institutions.
 
Robert earned his BA, Plan II Honors in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His Ph.D. dissertation was The cultural history of religions and the ethics of progress: Building the human in 20th century religion, science, and art.
 
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