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Researching World Christianity: Doctoral Dissertations on Mission since 1900

INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 29, No. 4 I July 1983 the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH published a compilation prepared by E. Theodore Bachmann of 934 American doctoral dissertations on missions for degrees granted between 1945 and 1981. In July 1993 William A. Smalley prepared a ten-year update that listed an additional 512 North American dissertations. Stanley H. Skreslet compiled the next decennial supplement in July 2003, listing an additional 925 dissertations. The geographical coverage of this third survey was expanded to include English-language dissertations from all over the world.1 During the past fifteen months, Yale Divinity School Library staff, under the direction of the authors and in conjunction with the Overseas Ministries Study Center, have compiled an electronic database that incorporates all 2,371 titles identified in the previous compilations, as well as 2,822 others—a total of 5,193 doctoral dissertations. The scope of the present listing has been further expanded in several ways. First, like the most recent compilation, it includes English-language doctoral dissertations without regard to country of origin (see table 1). Second, rather than focusing narrowly on missions, it also includes dissertations dealing with Christianity outside the West. Excluded are dissertations about Christianity in Europe, Australasia, and North America, with the exception of those treating aboriginal missions in those areas. Third, it expands the chronological scope to include dissertations presented since 1900 (see table 2), which makes clear the amazing increase in interest in missions on the part of the academic community over the past century. Fourth, unlike the earlier compilations, which were limited to “research” doctorates, understood to include the Th.D. and the Researching World Christianity: Doctoral Dissertations on Mission Since 1900