Nathalie Luca

Nathalie Luca (born 1966) is a French research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), an anthropologist and a sociologist of religions. She is director of the Center for Studies on Social Sciences of the Religious (CéSor) at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She was co-editor-in-chief of the French review Archives de sciences sociales des religions.

She was a member of the French government agency monitoring and combatting cultic deviances MIVILUDES from March 2003 to November 2005. She resigned on the ground that she refused to participate in a predictable hardening of policy of this organization.

She wrote many books on groups she defined as "cults" and is regularly interviewed in the media, and by anti-cult organizations on this issue. She said she is not in favour of the establishment of a list of cults.