Professor Tomáš Halik is head of the Department of Philosophy of Religion at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is also Rector of the University Church of the Holy Saviour and President of the Czech Christian Academy.He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and various specialized scientific boards and societies in the Czech Republic and abroad.

He studied philosophy, sociology and psychology at Charles Unversity prior to receiving his PhDr. degree in 1972. He then worked as a psychologist at the Institute of the Ministry of Industry, and as a psychotherapist with drug addicts at the University Hospital in Prague. During the period of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, he studied theology clandestinely and was secretly ordained a priest in 1978. He worked extensively in the underground church and was a close associate of the late Cardinal Tomašek. After the fall of Communism he studied theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, where he received his Th.Lic. in 1992.

Professor Halik has lectured at universities throughout the world, including Europe, the United States, India, Latin America and Japan. He has written more than 200 books and articles, published in Czech, German, Polish, Italian and Spanish. His specialties include philosophy and sociology of religion, interreligious dialogue, and relations between religion, culture and politics.