Mattias Gardell

Hans Bertil Mattias Gardell (born 10 August 1959) is a Swedish historian and scholar of comparative religion. He is the current holder of the Nathan Söderblom Chair of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was the first Lenin Award laureate in 2009, and received The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities Award for Distinguished Research in the Humanities, the Royal Gold Medal, in 2003. Career Mattias Gardell was born in Solna, Stockholm County, Sweden. He earned a PhD in the history of religions at Stockholm University in 1995 and became a docent in 1999. He has been working at the Department of Comparative Religion and the Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Stockholm University. He has also lived and studied in Cairo, Egypt. In March 2006 he was appointed the first holder (from 1 July 2006) of the Nathan Söderblom Chair of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University. Gardell specializes in the study of religious extremism and religious racism in the United States, studying groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam, and folkish movements in Neopaganism (Odinism). His 1995 dissertation on Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam was published in both British and American editions. As an expert on Islamophobia, he testified as an expert witness in the trial of Anders Behring Breivik and co-authored the "Sweden"-section of the European Islamophobia Report 2017 published by Turkish think-tank SETA.