On 22 July Inform held its first Inform Seminar to take place online. This was on the subject of Sexual Abuse framed by Faith or Belief, and featured speakers from many different backgrounds and academic disciplines. Thank you to the many of you who took part; we had an attendance of 110! A recording can be seen here: https://youtu.be/5itTMZadhOc.

Inform have also recently reached the successful conclusion of a 5-year ERC-funded project (Ayuryog) on the relationships between Yoga, Ayurveda and Indian longevity practices. This project has resulted in a series of online resources relating to health, healing and immortality in minority religions. These are available here: https://inform.ac/Inform-Ayuryog .

The staff and governors of Inform have regular contributors to the Religion Media Centre’s briefings, and researchers associated with Inform have created a number of factsheets on subjects including the Order of the Nine Angles, Genesis II Church and its teachings on bleach-drinking, and how the Jehovah’s Witnesses have adapted to Covid-19 restrictions (https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/fact-sheets/).

Inform is the only organisation in the UK that aims to provide wholly impartial, up-to-date and contextualised information on a huge variety of minority religious and non-religious movements, using the methods of the social sciences. If you agree that we provide an invaluable service, you may wish to become a Friend of Inform. When face-to-face events resume, this will entitle you to a discount of 10% on seminar attendance, and you would be helping to secure our future as a charity. Alternatively, you may wish to make a donation. Please go to https://inform.ac/donationstoinform for more information.

Another alternative is to sign up to Amazon Smile, through which Inform receives 0.5% of every payment you make on Amazon, at no additional cost to you. There is no membership fee. To sign up, go to www.amazon.co.uk and key in “Smile”, or go directly to smile.amazon.co.uk, then select “Information Network Focus on Religious Movements”. It’s really easy to do!

Finally, do email us at inform@kcl.ac.uk if you have questions about what we offer, or would like to report any interesting developments in new religious movements or the wider religious landscape. We are always pleased to hear from you.

With best wishes,

The Inform team:

Dr Suzanne Newcombe

Dr Sarah Harvey

Silke Steidinger

Warwick Hawkins