About CSWCEdinburgh

The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (formerly, the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World) is a research centre in the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.

Researching Chinese Christianity in the 2020s

On October 13, 2020, the Centre hosted a panel discussion with leading experts in the field of Chinese Christianity: Dr Mark McLeister (University of Edinburgh), Professor Chloë F. Starr (Yale Divinity School), and Dr Kevin Xiyi Yao (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), and moderated by Dr Alexander Chow (University of Edinburgh). Topics ranged from the personal interests in the field, different disciplinary methodologies (historical, theological, and social scientific), and a debate around Chinese Christianity’s relationship with World Christianity.

If you are unable to access the video above from YouTube, you can also try watching it from the University of Edinburgh’s Media Hopper service.

Sharing Spaces: British Protestant Missionaries to Formosa – Call for Papers

In honor of missionary contributions to Taiwan, Changhua Christian Hospital Historical Museum collaborates with Asia Pacific Studies, University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), Department of History, Tung Hai University, Department of History, National Chung Shing University, and Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) to host the 2020 International Conference on the History of Christian Protestant Missionaries. The conference is due to take place on the 24th – 25th September 2020, in the Changhua Christian Hospital International Education and Training Center (Changhua, Taiwan).

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Yale-Edinburgh 2020 and 2021

You will not be surprised that we are canceling this year’s Yale-Edinburgh conference. Whilst some countries are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, others are only entering it. Travel restrictions are likely to be in place for sometime. We are very sorry that we won’t be welcoming participants to Edinburgh this year. We had a large number of fascinating abstracts.

Those who have booked for the conference and accommodation will have their money reimbursed. This may take a week or two to reach your bank accounts, so please bear with the adminstrator, Mrs Jean Reynolds, as she deals with this. Please be in touch with cswc-events@ed.ac.uk if you have any practical difficulties. 

At this stage we would already like to invite you to Yale-Edinburgh 2021! We very much hope that it will be possible to hold the conference at the end of June next year. We propose to have the same theme ‘Oral, Print and Digital Cultures‘ and we will hold it in Edinburgh. It remains particularly topical as there has been an increased move to digital forms of Christian worship during the spread of COVID-19. This move remains uneven and dynamic. We will not keep the 2020 abstracts. You may like to submit the same one next year or write a new one.

We will write again towards the end of the year with dates and more information.

In the meantime, we send our prayers for your good health.

Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood

COVID-19, Disease and the World Church — Call for Papers

In the midst of a pandemic that is shaking the globe we call for papers for a special issue of Studies in World Christianity that analyse immediate responses to COVID-19 and that give some historical perspective on pandemics or epidemics. We do this in order to resource further response to pandemic whose effects will be with us for some years to come.

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