Author Archives: Jim

Call for Papers: Ecclesiology & Ethnography Conference 2021

Call for Papers: Durham 2021
Ecclesiology and Ethnography Conference,
Durham University, 21st-23rd September 2021

This conference is part of The Network for Ecclesiology & Ethnography, which seeks to draw together scholars working with theological approaches to qualitative research on the Christian Church. We welcome papers that explore the dynamic relationship between the theological and the lived-in ecclesiology. It is a wide-ranging conference, and part of the joy is discovering a diversity of specialisms. Past papers have included ethnography, systematic theology, ecclesiology, practical theology and social science approaches. Attendees range from senior scholars to doctoral students and local ministers. This is also an excellent place to present as a post graduate or early career researcher, or as a pastor/scholar in ministry. Learning is generously shared and critiques are supportive.

There are three types of paper sessions at the Durham Conference:

  • Plenary Sessions (60 minutes)
  • Track Sessions (45 minutes)
  • Seminar Sessions (30 minutes)

Out of all the submitted papers, the conference committee selects 5 – 8 Keynote Papers for the Plenary Sessions. The Keynote Papers are selected based on quality (level of completion, originality, etc.), relevance (thematic, theoretical, methodological, etc.), and representation (nationality, gender, etc.).

The Track Sessions are for Researchers holding a PhD (or equivalent) whereas the Seminar Sessions are for PhD-students and Practitioners. In recent years we have been able to make space for all the submitted papers. In the event of more papers than the time allows for, a waiting list will be organized.

Please note: we will communicate in a timely fashion any information regarding the impact of COVID restrictions. Please make arrangements according to international travel regulations. If we are unable to meet in person, we will hold an online conference or a blended conference. In these circumstances, we will adapt the conference and presentation of papers accordingly.

How to submit a paper proposal for The Durham Conference
  1. Fill out the electronic form, including a short paper proposal.
  2. Wait for a response. You should receive a response within a week. If, for any reason, you do not receive feedback within reasonable time – human and digital errors do occur, unfortunately – please contact the program coordinator at Knut.Tveitereid@mf.no.
  3. Remember to register. If your paper is accepted for presentation, you still have to register for the conference. After you have registered, your paper is formally accepted for presentation.
How to present a paper at The Durham Conference

By September 1st you should submit your paper in full text. Most papers tend to be 10–15 pages. All full text papers will be circulated to all registered participants a week ahead of the conference.

When presenting your paper, please leave approximately half the session’s allotted time to discussion. In other words, you will not have the time to read all of your paper in full length. An oral presentation of important points made in your paper normally works better.

There are projectors available in all conference rooms.

Only Plenary Sessions will be chaired. For the Track Sessions and Seminar Sessions, presenters in the same session are encouraged to chair each other’s papers.

Submission Guidelines

To propose a paper, please complete our online form by 31st May.  All paper proposals will be reviewed and we’ll let you know the status of your proposal ASAP. If you have any questions please email the Conference Team: Dr Knut Tveitereid (Academic Coordinator) at Knut.Tveitereid@mf.no (please note: this email address has changed) or Professor Pete Ward (Conference Founder and Host) at peter.ward@durham.ac.uk or Dr Gretchen Schoon Tanis (Conference Coordinator) at schoontanis@gmail.com.

Propose a paper

Call for Papers: Migration & Muslim Population (SISR/ISSR conference)

Dear colleagues,

I am chairing this session for the 2021 SISR/ISSR Conference detailed in the following link:

Migration and Muslim Population: Muslims In The West And Religious Minorities In The Islamic Societies

https://conference-system.sisr-issr.org/conferences/conference-2021/#papers

https://www.sisr-issr.org/en/

ABSTRACT Submission Deadline: 28 February 2021

With best wishes,

Yaghoob.

“The idea is to die young as late as possible” Ashley Montagu (1905 – 1999).

Religion, Race & Racism: Transnational Conversations Seminar Series

Convenors:

Katie Gaddini, Dunya Habash and Lea Taragin-Zeller

Event description:

From the rise of white Christian nationalism in the United States to anti-immigration rhetoric against ‘Muslim refugees’ in Europe, the imbrication of race, racism and religion extends across geographic locations, social settings, and political contexts. As xenophobia and discrimination surge around the globe, religion and race are often conflated in everyday violence, yet their relationship is undertheorized in scholarly research. This seminar series Religion, Race and Racism: Transnational Conversations, brings emerging and senior scholars into conversation. In doing so, we reject a single-issue approach to the study of key social and political events, and push for an intersectional approach to the study of race, racism and religion. By facilitating conversations between leading scholars examining the relationship between race and religion, this series offers divergent perspectives, opposing views, and creative theorizations to offer fresh analytical tools for an urgent area of study.

Register HERE

Seminar schedule:  * All 15:30 – 16:30 GMT

March 3: Encounters of Race, Religion and Biomedicine

  • ‘Suspicion and Resentment: Gender, Race, and Religion in the Context of Clinical Care’
    Dr. Mwenza Blell, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle
  • ‘Race and Religion as Selective Reproductive Technologies in US Embryo Adoption’
    Dr. Risa Cromer, Department of Anthropology, Purdue University
  • ‘Indigenous African Jewishness and Genetic Knowledge Production’
    Dr. Noah Tamarakin, Department of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University
  • Discussant: Dr. Lea Taragin Zeller, Technion Institute of Technology (Haifa) & Woolf Institute

March 11: Christianity and Whiteness in America: From Past to Present

  • Professor Philip Gorski, Department of Sociology, Yale University
  • Mr. Jemar Tisby, Public Historian & President of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective
  • Discussant: Dr. Katie Gaddini, Social Research Institute, University College London

March 22: The Crescent, Colour and Capitalism: Migration and Integration Politics

  • ‘Anti-Black Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Multiracial Fantasies of Pax Ottomana in Turkey’
    Professor Esra Özyürek, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge & Dr Ezgi Guner, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • ‘The Coloniality of Migration: On the Racism-Migration Nexus’
    Professor Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Department of Sociology, University of Giessen
  • Discussant: Dunya Habash, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge and Woolf Institute
  • All 15:30 – 16:30 GMT

Hosted by the Woolf Institute, University of Cambridge & the Social Research Institute,

University College London

Call for Papers: SISR/ISSR session on Religion and Social Theory, July 12-15 2021

The International Society for the Sociology of Religion will meet online this year from 12-15 July.  We are seeking papers in French or English on the role of social theory in the sociological study of religion.  The deadline for submission is Feb 28th.

Click HERE for more information about the conference and a link to the submission page.

Religion And Social Theory // Religion Et Théorie Sociale

Organizers:

  • Jim Spickard – University of Redlands
  • Titus Hjelm – University of Helsinki

Session Abstract:

The aim of this session is to stimulate debate about theoretical ideas that have a bearing on the sociological study of religion.We welcome contributions from researchers applying both familiar and less familiar traditions of social theory to religious topics. We especially invite papers that connect sociological theories of religion to the social, cultural, and/or historical contexts in which they arise and/or are used. Such papers might explore what such shaping has prevented sociologists from seeing about religious life or, on the contrary, what such shaping has enabled sociologists to understand that theories generated in other contexts has not. We also welcome papers on other aspects of the relationship between religion and social theory.

Résumé de la session:

Le but de cette session est de stimuler le débat sur les idées théoriques ayant un impact sur l’étude sociologique de la religion.Nous acceptons les propositions de chercheurs mobilisant des théories connues comme moins connues sur des faits religieux. Nous invitons en particulier les soumissions qui font le lien entre les théories sociologiques de la religion et les contextes sociaux, culturels et historiques dans lesquels elles surgissent ou sont utilisées. Les propositions peuvent par exemple mettre en lumière les différentes facettes ou dimensions de la vie religieuse que ces différents usages des théories ont obscurcit ou même empêché de voir les sociologues de voir ou, à rebours, ce que ces usages ont permis de voir que d’autres théories n’ont pas vu. Nous accueillons également des propositions sur d’autres aspects de la relation entre théorie sociologique et religion.

Call for Papers: SISR/ISSR Session on Religion and Healing

We invite proposed papers (in English or French) for a panel on Religion and Healing at the SISR/ISSR 2021 online conference this summer (12-15 July). Please submit your abstracts here. Deadline: 28 February 2021

Nous avons le plaisir de vous transmettre un appel à communication pour un panel sur Religion et Guérison dans le cadre de la  36e conférence de la Société internationale pour la sociologie des religions, qui se tiendra en ligne du 12 au 15 juillet prochain.

Religion et guérison: classiques et nouveaux horizons en anthropologie de la guérison

Religion and Health: New Directions and Classical Orientations in the Anthropology of Healing

Géraldine Mossière, Institut d’études religieuses, Université de Montréal

Marina Rougeon, Instituto de Saúde Coletiva, Universidade Federal da Bahia (ISC/UFBA, Brazil)

Résumé de la session:

Religion et guérison ont été historiquement interconnectés de bien des façons, que ce soit par le souci chrétien de sauver les âmes, par le recours à la sorcellerie pour gérer les conflits, ou encore par la libération des excès d’émotions dans les transes et possessions. L’engouement populaire que connaissent actuellement les enseignements et pratiques issus des courants de développement personnel participe également de cette tendance qui s’appuie notamment sur les nouvelles spiritualités inspirées des traditions orientales ou autochtones. Ces dèrnieres constituent seulement une des multiples façons dont la religion et la guérison s’entrecroisent dans les sociétés globalisées et sécularisées. Dans cette session, nous appelons des contributions basées sur des études théoriques ou empiriques dans le but de repenser la variété des sites où ces thématiques s’articulent. Avec pour objectif de revisiter les prémisses d’une anthropologie de la guérison actuelle, nous invitons les participants à traiter entre autres des thématiques suivantes: définitions du sujet et de la personne sur lesquelles les pratiques de guérison s’appuient, rôle de la (non)circulation transnationale des ressources religieuses, émergence d’autorités informelles (coach de vies) et réorientation du rôle des guérisseurs traditionnels, sens et affects impliqués dans les pratiques de guérison, statut et symboles associés au corps dans ces pratiques, et pratiques qui visent plus spécifiquement les problèmes de santé mentale ou les crises sanitaires.

Summary

Religion and healing have long been entangled in many ways, such Christianity’s concern with saving souls, the use of sorcery to deal with social conflicts, and the release of emotional overflows through trance possessions. Today’s popular enthusiasm for teachings and practices in personal development is also situated on this thematic seam and it hinges on new spiritualities inspired by Oriental or Native traditions. The latter are just one of the many ways religion and healing intersect in global and secular societies. In this session, we invite contributions based on empirical and theoretical studies in order to revisit the variety of contemporary sites where such thematics intersect. With the aim of rethinking the premises of an anthropology of healing, we invite participants to address the following (and non-exhaustive) list of themes: definitions of the subject and person that healing practices involve, the role of transnational (non-)circulation of religious resources, the emergence of informal authorities (life coaches) and the reorientation of traditional healers’ role, the senses and affects involved in healing practices, the status and symbols associated to the body in these practices, and the practices specifically dedicated to mental health or sanitary crises.

Les propositions sont les bienvenues jusqu’au 28 février au lien suivant : https://conference-system.sisr-issr.org/conferences/conference-2021/?lang=fr#papers

Call for Papers: Implicit Religion, Race, and Representation 21-23 May 2021 (online)

UK – 2021 Implicit Religion, Race, and Representation

Call for Papers
Deadline for submissions is 15 March, 2021

This online only conference takes place against the backdrop of increased political authoritarianism and a noticeable rise in racial and religious intolerance across the world. Politicians are actively seeking to prevent teaching on critical race theory, colonial brutality and the ongoing legacy of enslavement. Concurrently we increasingly find ‘race’ being dismissed or diminished as a category of oppression within wider social problems and dynamics, at the expense of understanding the lives, cultures, and histories of Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour. To understand how assertions of identity function at the same time as racism, nationalism, and exclusion we need to view these developments as intertwined with religion and in the development of definitions of religion and religiosity. The ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, the burning of the Amazon, attempts to lay pipelines in North Dakota, conducting scientific experiments on indigenous sacred lands and responses to other acts of neo-colonialism might be productively analysed in terms of race, religion, and implicit religion.

Presenters are invited to submit abstracts for consideration on the theme of “Implicit Religion, Race, and Representation”. These might include, but are not limited to:

  • Presence, absence, and resistance in representations of race
  • New social movements, resistance, and counter movements (civil rights, indigenous rights, anti-apartheid movements, Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name etc.)
  • Womanist analysis, thinking, being, and doing
  • Agency and social otherness
  • Embodying and embracing difference
  • Technologies (visual, material, and sound) and racial categories in culture memory and the formation of identity
  • Racialisation of religion and religious racism
  • Methodologies for decolonising teaching and curricula in the study of religion
  • Political and religious authoritarianism: past, present, and future
CFP PDFs

A4 IR UK 2021 CFP | Ltr IR UK 2021 CFP

Proposal Submissions

We invite submissions for proposals for either a paper or a scratch session on these themes, elaborated above, by the 15th March 2021 for #IR43, taking place online May 21st – 23rd 2021.

The submission form is now available. You will be asked to indicate if you are submitting a paper or scratch session, and to provide a 300 word abstract (with references to secondary literature and sources) and other information as specified below, and what we need to know in order to accommodate your participation if your proposal is accepted.

Please note while you can edit your entries before you select the submit button, the form does not allow the submission to be saved and edited later. We suggest looking at the form for context and then composing the abstract and the notes regarding accommodating your participation in a word processing document and then cutting and pasting these elements of the proposal into the form.

PAPERS

Please select the option “Paper” on the form. Those submitting papers are asked to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words.

SCRATCH SESSIONS

There will be a dedicated panel for advanced undergraduates, MA and early stage PhD students to present at – called a scratch session. These will be shorter papers and rather than the usual practise of asking questions of the presenters, the audience will make suggestions for further reading, pathways for improvement, scholars to explore etc. If you wish to apply for the scratch session, please select that option on the submission form and submit a 200–250 word abstract.

Keynote

The 2021 Edward Bailey Lecture, “Designing for Humans, Designing Research on Human Subjects: Race, Representations, and Rights” will be delivered by Dr Ipsita Chatterjea, Executive Director of the Study of Religion as an Analytical Discipline Workshop.

Workshop

A workshop on decolonising the curriculum, with an emphasis on religious studies will be delivered by Dr Malory Nye.

Please note we are a small organisation and as such are not in a position to provide bursaries for participation. We can provide you with an official letter of invite and a subsequent letter of participation if your university or funding body requires it.

Funding: Jack Shand Research Grants for the social-scientific study of religion

Now Accepting Shand Research Grant Applications

A generous bequest from Jack Shand, a long–term member of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion until his death in 2001, has made it possible for SSSR to offer Jack Shand Research Grants to support research in the social scientific study of religion.

For 2021, SSSR Council allocated $45,000 to this program. As part of our commitment to racial equality, 2021 Jack Shand Research Funds will support projects on racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups. While individual grants do not ordinarily exceed $5000, it is possible to make a special request for more, to be considered at the committee’s discretion. Applicants must have finished the Ph.D. degree and must be members of SSSR. In the case of co–authored requests, one author must be a member. Intellectual merit is the criterion by which proposals will be evaluated.

Individuals are expected to use the Jack Shand award for expenses connected with their research. SSSR prioritizes applications that support direct research expenses. Shand Award funding is transferred to the principle investigator’s university unless other arrangements are made. Please note that SSSR does not allow for any indirect cost recovery.

All applications must be submitted via the online submission form, which is accessible through the link at the top of this page. Applications emailed to the committee chair or executive office will not be accepted. A Shand Research Grant application must include a project proposal (up to 4 pages, single-spaced), budget (expenses with descriptions/justifications), and the principle investigator’s curriculum vitae in PDF format. The deadline is May 1, 2021.

Funding decisions will be made by August 1, 2021.
More information: sssreligion.org/awards-grants/jack-shand-research-grants/

Final Call for Papers: SocRel Annual Conference July 13-15, online

This is just a quick reminder that abstract submission for the socrel annual conference closes tomorrow. Please follow this link for the call for papers and to access the portal to submit your abstract. We can also now confirm the registration rates for the conference but please note bursary winners for the 2020 conference will have their fees waived.

  • BSA Member Full Conference: £20
  • Socrel Study Group Member Full Conference: £25
  • Non-Member Full Conference: £40

The conference will take place via zoom from 13th to 15th July 2021 and we have a great line up of speakers planned including: Sarah-Jane Page (Aston University), Sam Perry (University of Oklahoma), Colin Campbell (University of York), Eileen Barker (London School of Economics), Grace Davie (Exeter University), Jim Beckford (Warwick University) and Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University) so please do consider submitting an abstract. It would be great to see as many of you there as possible for our first online conference.

Key Dates:

  • Abstract submission closes: 10 February 2021
  • Decision notification: 26 February 2021
  • Presenter registration closes: 26 March 2021
  • Registration closes: 30th June 2021

Should you have any questions or queries, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes,

Dr Rachael Shillitoe
Research Fellow
Conference and Events Officer for the British Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Group (SocRel)

Call for Papers: SISR/ISSR Session on Religion and Social Theory

We invite proposed papers (in English or French) for a panel on Religion and Social Theory at the SISR/ISSR 2021 online conference this summer (12-15 July). Please submit your abstracts here. Deadline: 28 February 2021

Religion and Social Theory // Religion et Théorie Sociale

Session Convener(s):

  • Jim Spickard
  • Titus Hjelm

Session Abstract:

The aim of this session is to stimulate debate about theoretical ideas that have a bearing on the sociological study of religion.

We welcome contributions from researchers applying both familiar and less familiar traditions of social theory to religious topics. We especially invite papers that connect sociological theories of religion to the social, cultural, and/or historical contexts in which they arise and/or are used. Such papers might explore what such shaping has prevented sociologists from seeing about religious life or, on the contrary, what such shaping has enabled sociologists to understand that theories generated in other contexts has not. We also welcome papers on other aspects of the relationship between religion and social theory.