Kim Knott is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme (www.diasporas.ac.uk) and co-ordinates the work of forty nine research projects on a variety of subjects and issues in diaspora studies.  She works half-time in this capacity and half-time in her post as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leeds where she has studied and worked in a variety of roles from Research Fellow early in her career, to lecturer, then professor. 

Since 1989 she has coordinated the work of the Community Religions Project, a research group in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds which has fostered the study of religions in Leeds and the wider region. In this capacity she has overseen the publication of its monographs and research paper series, supervised postgraduate students, run an annual team-project on ‘The Religious Mapping of Leeds’, and directed alone or with others various research projects (on African Caribbean Christianity, the religious lives of young British Asian women, inter-religious social action, British Hindu oral histories, the location of religion in public sector organisations, an arts and humanities literature review of research on terrorism, and portrayals of religion in the British media).  Her research has been funded by government, public and voluntary bodies such as the Home Office, Yorkshire and Humber Regional Assembly and Leeds Faiths Forum, as well as AHRC, ESRC, Leverhulme Trust and Hibbert Trust. 

Her books include The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Equinox, 2005), Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1998/2000) – which won the SHAP Book Prize – and My Sweet Lord: The Hare Krishna Movement (Aquarian Press, 1986).  She has published widely on religion, ethnicity, identity and gender, and her current research is on space and the sacred.
Professor Knott was Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds from 1998-2001, and Head of the School of Humanities.  Beyond the university, she has served as President of the British Association for the Study of Religions, and is currently General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religions.  She is a Fellow of the RSA.