View All Book Series

Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism

About the Book Series

Pilgrimage, defined here as people’s journeys to and from places of special significance as well as what they do at these places, has been a perennial activity in human history and remains very popular worldwide. Old pilgrimage routes can be observed from palaeolithic times across all religions and religious cultures, and many of these have been restored while new ones continue to be created; pilgrimage destinations – local, regional, national and international − attract increasing numbers of visitors’ places as well as media attention. Such developments are part of a global process where different forms of travel – physical movement such as labour and lifestyle migration, tourism of various forms, the cultural heritage industry – have become a major feature of the modern world. These developments involve relations between people and other-than-humans. They also involve the creation of art, buildings and other material constraints to sacralise the countryside, and have done so from the beginning.

This series, established in 2015, includes studies from global and cross-cultural perspectives of topics, such as:

  • pilgrimage as journey and human practice at destinations  
  • history of pilgrimage
  • landscape and performance
  • pilgrimage and travel writing;
  • heritage and tourism
  • gender and sexuality
  • political economy of pilgrimage
  • material culture
  • relations between humans and other-than-humans
  • ideological and violent struggles over religion and resistance to tourist intrusion
  • inter-religious engagement and comparative pilgrimage
  • pilgrimage to sites of suffering

18 Series Titles


Approaching Pilgrimage Methodological Issues Involved in Researching Routes, Sites, and Practices

Approaching Pilgrimage: Methodological Issues Involved in Researching Routes, Sites, and Practices

1st Edition

Edited By Mario Katić, John Eade
January 30, 2025

This volume seeks to explore pilgrimage studies as a distinctive sub-field of research, and to define its key methodological approaches and problems. Pilgrimage studies has long been influenced by such academic disciplines as anthropology and this volume considers the new insights that pilgrimage ...

The Limits of Pilgrimage Place

The Limits of Pilgrimage Place

1st Edition

By T.K Rousseau
January 09, 2023

Through case studies of three pilgrimage sites related to the Virgin Mary, this book explores how pilgrimage places in today’s globalized world do not exist as contained spaces but have porous boundaries, both physically and conceptually. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on art ...

Muslim Women’s Pilgrimage to Mecca and Beyond Reconfiguring Gender, Religion, and Mobility

Muslim Women’s Pilgrimage to Mecca and Beyond: Reconfiguring Gender, Religion, and Mobility

1st Edition

Edited By Marjo Buitelaar, Manja Stephan-Emmrich, Viola Thimm
May 30, 2022

This book investigates female Muslims pilgrimage practices and how these relate to women’s mobility, social relations, identities, and the power structures that shape women’s lives. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and regional expertise, it offers in-depth investigation of the...

The Dynamics of Pilgrimage Christianity, Holy Places, and Sensory Experience

The Dynamics of Pilgrimage: Christianity, Holy Places, and Sensory Experience

1st Edition

By Dee Dyas
April 29, 2022

This book offers a systematic, chronological analysis of the role played by the human senses in experiencing pilgrimage and sacred places, past and present. It thus addresses two major gaps in the existing literature, by providing a broad historical narrative against which patterns of continuity ...

Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism Commemorating the Dead

Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism: Commemorating the Dead

1st Edition

Edited By John Eade, Mario Katić
December 12, 2019

Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism is the first volume to bring together a detailed analysis of professional military pilgrimage with other forms of commemorating military conflict. The volume looks beyond the discussion of battlefield tourism undertaken primarily by civilians which has ...

Muslim Pilgrimage in Europe

Muslim Pilgrimage in Europe

1st Edition

Edited By Ingvild Flaskerud, Richard J. Natvig
December 12, 2019

In spite of Islam’s long history in Europe and the growing number of Muslims resident in Europe, little research exists on Muslim pilgrimage in Europe. This collection of eleven chapters is the first systematic attempt to fill this lacuna in an emerging research field. Placing the pilgrims’ ...

Mobile Lifeworlds An Ethnography of Tourism and Pilgrimage in the Himalayas

Mobile Lifeworlds: An Ethnography of Tourism and Pilgrimage in the Himalayas

1st Edition

By Christopher A. Howard
December 10, 2019

Mobile Lifeworlds illustrates how the imaginaries and ideals of Western travellers, especially those of untouched nature and spiritual enlightenment, are consistent with media representations of the Himalayan region, romanticism and modernity at large. Blending tourism and pilgrimage, travel across...

New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies Global Perspectives

New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives

1st Edition

Edited By Dionigi Albera, John Eade
December 10, 2019

Although there has been a massive increase in the volume of pilgrimage research and publications, traditional Anglophone scholarship has been dominated by research in Western Europe and North America. In their previous edited volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (Routledge, 2015...

Excavating Pilgrimage Archaeological Approaches to Sacred Travel and Movement in the Ancient World

Excavating Pilgrimage: Archaeological Approaches to Sacred Travel and Movement in the Ancient World

1st Edition

Edited By Troels Myrup Kristensen, Wiebke Friese
November 28, 2019

This volume sheds new light on the significance and meaning of material culture for the study of pilgrimage in the ancient world, focusing in particular on Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity. It thus discusses how archaeological evidence can be used to advance our...

Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790-1850

Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790-1850

1st Edition

By Kathryn Barush
January 10, 2019

The practice of walking to a sacred space for personal and spiritual transformation has long held a place in the British imagination. Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain examines the intersections of the concept of pilgrimage and the visual imagination from the years 1790 to 1850. Through a close...

Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage Journeying to the Sacred

Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage: Journeying to the Sacred

1st Edition

By Avril Maddrell, Veronica della Dora, Alessandro Scafi, Heather Walton
June 28, 2018

This volume provides a theoretically and empirically-grounded study of the significance of landscape in the experience of Christian pilgrimage across different denominations and its intersection with cultural heritage and tourism. The book focuses on pilgrimages to Meteora (Greece), Subiaco (Italy)...

International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles

International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles

1st Edition

Edited By John Eade, Dionigi Albera
June 28, 2018

Although research on contemporary pilgrimage has expanded considerably since the early 1990s, the conversation has largely been dominated by Anglophone researchers in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and religious studies from the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Northern Europe. ...

1-12 of 18
AJAX loader