Susan Jean Palmer (born 1946) is a Canadian sociologist of religion and author whose primary research interest is new religious movements.
[1] Her great-grandparents were polygamist Mormons, who moved to Canada from the United States to avoid the U.S. law against polygamy.
Palmer was a professor of religious studies at Dawson College in Westmount, Quebec, before becoming she is currently an Affiliate Professor at Concordia University, and is also the Principal Investigator on the four-year SSHRC-funded research project, "Children in Sectarian Religions" at McGill University in Montreal, where she teaches courses on new religious movements.
Her article "Caught Up in the Cult Wars: Confessions of a Canadian Researcher" has reappeared in several anthologies.
The New Heretics of France explores the state-sponsored persecution of religious minorities,[8][9] and The Nuwaubian Nation argues that Black Nationalist prophets in the US are targeted by networks of interest groups and rarely receive a fair trial.