AN INTENSIVE TRAINING PROGRAMME

Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, University of Kent

25th of February to the 1st of March 

This training programme is available for doctoral students registered at any higher education institution in the UK/EU and abroad. It is based on previous training developed by the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, funded by the AHRC, which led to the development of the Religion Methods website, and aims to provide students with a core training in fieldwork approaches to the study of religion.

Topics covered by the training will include:

• Conceptualising religion for research
• Key elements and processes of research design
• The role of theory in social research
• The politics and ethics of research
• Rigour and validity in research
• Using quantitative data-sets for research on religion
• Ethnographic approaches in theory and practice
• Developing research interviews
• Applying Gender and Sexuality perspectives in the study of religion
• Comparative sociological methods
• Historical methods in the study of religion
• Research Impact, Writing journal articles and Book proposals

To attend this training programme, students not registered at the University of Kent will be required to pay a £100 registration fee, which would cover attendance at all sessions and the costs of training materials. Delegates would need to make their own arrangements for accommodation, and there is a wide selection of affordable B&B provision in the Canterbury area. For those planning to commute on a daily basis, Canterbury is now less than an hour from London St Pancras on the high speed train link.

Space on the programme is limited and the deadline to register your interest to attend this programme is Tuesday 15 of January. To register your interest, please email Manoela Carpenedo (M.carpenedo@kent.ac.uk) with a short statement outlining the university at which you are currently registered, the focus and method of your doctoral project and the stage of the project you are currently at (250 words).

Studies in World Christianity has sought to bring to the attention of the academy those Christian communities and theologies that have frequently been overlooked. The four articles in this issue deal – in very different ways – with questions of marginality and minority. The first two articles use historical and social-science methods to examine Christian groups in Burma and Jordan that are socially and religiously marginal. The second two articles examine political theologies. One describes the historical development of a theology of justice in war from China that has been overlooked by more prominent Western theological traditions. The other offers a constructive theology that places marginalised people in Australia at the centre of Christology. The articles present no single understanding of marginality: it is a social fact; it is something that Christian belonging can overcome; it is Christ-like; it challenges the majority and the influential; it has caused insights to be overlooked. Nevertheless, these articles, as they inquire into people, places and ideas that have been understudied or neglected, provide new angles on conversion, identity, just war and Christology. (Continue reading Emma Wild-Wood’s introduction here.)

• Pum Za Mang, The Politics of Religious Conversion among the Ethnic Chin in Burma
• Anna Hager, The Orthodox Issue in Jordan: The Struggle for an Arab and Orthodox Identity
• Wai Luen Kwok, Seeking Justice in the Midst of War: The Experience of War for Chinese Christians as Revealed in The True Light Review, 1937–1941
• Liam Miller, Christification of the Least: Potential for Christology and Discipleship

Professor Brian Stanley, director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, was recently interviewed about his new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History, by Professor Crawford Gribbon of Queen’s University Belfast. Click here to listen.