BSA/SocRel

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CFP: Sociology of Religion Study Group (Socrel) Annual Conference 2015

Sociology of Religion: Foundations and Futures

Sociology of Religion Study Group (Socrel) Annual Conference www.socrel.org.uk

Date of Conference: Tuesday 7 – Thursday 9 July 2015 hosted by Kingston University London High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, UK http://www.cct.org.uk/high-leigh/introduction 

Deadline for abstracts and panel proposals: December 1, 2014.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Nancy T. Ammerman (Boston University)

Professor James Beckford (University of Warwick)

Professor Grace Davie (University of Exeter)

Professor David Martin (London School of Economics)

Professor Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University)

Since its foundation in 1975, the Sociology of Religion Study Group has become one of the largest in the British Sociological Association (BSA). Its membership includes educators and researchers from across the UK and internationally, and in 2015 the Sociology of Religion Study Group will be celebrating 40 years!

Given this occasion, it is an opportune moment to reflect on religion in society, and religion in sociology. From its foundation, Socrel has foregrounded research on secularisation, gender, spiritualities, embodied and lived accounts, materiality, generational innovations, atheism, social difference, migration, institutions, politicised expressions and methodologies in the study of religion. While this list does not account for all the many ways scholars have been investigating religion in social life – its various forms, intersections and spaces – it does speak to how religions continue to be important subjective and collective experiences that are stable and continuous, resistant and shifting. This conference will bring together scholars who have shaped and are shaping the discipline. It will be an opportunity to pay heed, not only to the Study Group’s and discipline’s accomplishments, but also an opportunity to address questions that still need answering, and questions that are emerging to inform future agendas and areas of concern and study, such as:
 
– What are the key points of continuity and innovation in theorising religion? 
– How are methodologies emerging and informing research on religion? 
– How are new approaches adapting and transforming old practices? 
– What are the key controversies that will occupy sociologists of religion? 
– What are the pedagogical challenges and innovations in teaching the sociology of religion? 

We invite you to celebrate with us by engaging in the conference questions from your particular area of research in the Sociology of Religion. 

Abstracts for individual papers (250 words max.) and panel proposals (500 words max.) are invited by 1 December 2014. Panels may take a standard 20-minute paper format or take alternative modes such as pre-circulated papers/work in progress/or ‘points of view’ that are 10-minutes long. Submissions should be made in Word format and include in the following order: Name, institutional affiliation, email address and paper title.

**All presenters must be members of Socrel.
Abstracts will be subject to peer review. Please note, presenters will be limited to one paper per person at the conference, but you may also organise a panel. 

-Abstract submissions open: 1 September 2014 -Early bird registration opens: 1 September 2014 -Abstract submissions close: 1 December 2014 -Decision notification: 15 January 2015 -Presenter registration closes: 16 March 2015 -Draft programme online: 16 April 2015 -Early bird registration closes:  11 May 2015 -Registration closes: 15 June 2015 

Please send abstracts to the attention of the conference organisers:
Dr Sylvie Collins-Mayo (Kingston University London) and Dr Sonya Sharma (Kingston University London) at: socrel2015@gmail.com  

Should you have other questions about the conference please also contact the conference organisers at the above email address.

Online Registration: http://portal.britsoc.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10391 

A limited number of bursaries are available to support postgraduate, early career, low income or unwaged Socrel members to present at the conference. Please visit www.socrel.org.uk for instructions, and to download an application form, and submit your bursary application along with your abstract by 1 December 2014.

Socrel is the British Sociological Association’s study group on Religion. For more details about the study group and conference please visit www.socrel.org.uk.

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CFP: BSA Study Day – Sacred Space in Secular Institutions

Sacred Space in Secular Institutions

 Please send abstracts to Chris Hewson by 15 December: chris.hewson@manchester.ac.uk

 Venue: Humanities Bridgeford Street Building 1.69 (University of Manchester)

Date: Friday 18th January

The role, form and affect of sacred space(s) within ‘secular’ institutions is a theme that is increasingly attractive to scholars within the social sciences. This Socrel study day will consider how different types of organisation – including but not limited to educational establishments, hospitals and hospices, airports, public buildings, shopping centres, etc – ‘make space’ for faith, sacrality and religious practice(s) within their buildings, management structures and public offerings.

The study day will also consider: the key social, cultural and political drivers behind these spaces; precursors and ongoing developments; how such spaces are positioned within contemporary policy debates; and the practical issues practitioners should consider when designing and managing ‘sacred space’ within a secular institution. The day will be centred around three axes:

  • A reflection upon the wide range of institutions that contain set-aside ‘sacred space’.
  • A close sociological reading of what ‘happens’ within these spaces on a day-to-day basis, and how this might be conceptualised methodologically. For instance, how are they ‘shared’? How can effective use be measured?
  • A thoroughgoing assessment of the role and practice(s) of extant religious groups and traditions, within the provision and ongoing usage of these spaces.

 

We welcome contributions of any length (20 minute papers, 10-15 minute presentations) which address these, and any of the following questions:

  • What are these spaces for, and how are roles and designations contested?
  • What is or can be sacred about these spaces?
  • To what extent are these spaces multi-faith in either description or usage?
  • Do these spaces demonstrate novelty or continuity with existing forms?
  • What are the normative factors governing the development of these spaces (e.g. cohesion, diversity, customer focus, etc). Can these factors always be reconciled?

 Please send abstracts to Chris Hewson by 15 December:2012-13 Socrel Study Day CFP chris.hewson@manchester.ac.uk

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Event: Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion, 2nd Annual Symposium: Religion and Citizenship: Re-Thinking the Boundaries of Religion and the Secular

BSA Meeting Room, Imperial Wharf, London

13 December 2012, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Religions today are implicated in a wide variety of publics. From contests over the environment and democracy to protests against capitalism, religions remain important factors in political and public life across diverse, and interconnected, global contexts. A variety of diverse responses have been articulated to the so-called ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere, drawing into question relations between the religious, the non-religious and the secular. As scholars have developed new theoretical understandings of the terms of these debates and questioned how these are bound up with cultural conceptualizations of citizenship, education – in schools, universities and less formal educational contexts – has often been a site where contestations of the religious and the secular have been acutely felt. The aim of this symposium is to consider the interrelation between conceptions of the religious, the secular, citizenship and education, and to explore how these issues affect the study of religion in higher education.

To find out more about how participants from a variety of disciplines and contexts have engaged with these issues, join us on December 13 at the BSA Meeting Room in London, for a BSA Socrel symposium, organized by Paul-François Tremlett (Open University), Anna Strhan (University of Kent) and Abby Day (University of Kent and Chair of Socrel). It won’t be your usual ‘stand-and-deliver’ event. Our presenters are working hard to condense their work into short summaries that will be distributed to all participants in advance of the day via e-mail. All participants will be expected to read the summaries and come prepared for a full day of engaging in vibrant exchanges across disciplines, countries, methods and other conventional boundaries.

Total delegate numbers are restricted to 30. Last year’s inaugural symposium was oversubscribed, and early registration is encouraged. Registration for the symposium is now available on the BSA website.

Information on the venue location and transport links, is available at http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/london-meeting-room.aspx

For any further information, please contact Anna Strhan (A.H.B.Strhan@kent.ac.uk), Paul-François Tremlett (p.f.tremlett@open.ac.uk) and Abby Day (A.F.Day@kent.ac.uk). The full programme for the day will be published on the BSA Socrel website

Keynote lecture by Nasar Meer, Reader in Sociology, Northumbria University

Confirmed Speakers:

Discussants: Lois Lee (University of Kent), Paul-François Tremlett (Open University), Mujadad Zaman (University of Cambridge)

Presenters

Carool Kersten (King’s College, London) Indonesian Debates on Secularity and Religiosity: Islamists, Liberal Muslims, and Islamic Post-Traditionalists

Angela Quartermaine (University of Warwick) Investigating Warwickshire pupils’ perceptions of religious forms of terrorism

Trevor Stack (University of Aberdeen) Getting Beyond Religion as an Issue for Citizenship

Steven Kettell (University of Warwick) Barbarians at the Gates? Exploring the Rise of ‘Militant Secularism’

Rodrigo Cespedes Proto (Lancaster University) A Legal Perspective on Teaching and Studying Religion: Lessons from the European Court of Human Rights

Leni Franken (University of Antwerp) Religious and Citizenship Education in Belgium / Flanders

Olav Hovdelien (Oslo University College of Applied Sciences) A Secularist School in a Multicultural Society – The Norwegian Case

Slawomir Sztajer (Adam Mickiewicz University) Confessional Religious Education in State Schools: The Case of Poland

Simeon Wallis (University of Warwick) Faith beyond Belief in Religious Education

Graeme Smith (University of Chichester) Blurring the Boundaries: A critical evaluation of the concept of ‘resonance’ and its importance for understanding the relationship between the religious and the secular through the early work of Reinhold Niebuhr

Christos Tsironis (Aristotle University of Thessalonika) Perceptions of Greek students on the relation between the study of religion and volunteering

Kit Kirkland (University of St Andrews) The Christian Right’s Influence on Higher Education

 

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CFP: Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion, 2nd Annual Symposium

Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion, 2nd Annual Symposium

Call for Papers Deadline 15 September 2012

The 2012 Socrel / HEA Teaching and Studying Religion symposium will explore the theme: Religion and Citizenship: Re-Thinking the Boundaries of Religion and the Secular.

The symposium is organised by Socrel, the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group, with funding from the Higher Education Academy, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Subject Centre. Last year’s inaugural symposium was over-subscribed and therefore early submissions are encouraged.

Keynote speaker: Dr Nasar Meer, Northumbria University

Venue: BSA Meeting Room, Imperial Wharf, London

Date: 13 December 2012

10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Religions today are implicated in a wide variety of publics. From contests over the environment and democracy to protests against capitalism, religions remain important factors in political and public life across diverse, and interconnected, global contexts. A variety of diverse responses have been articulated to the so-called ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere, drawing into question relations between the religious, the non-religious and the secular. As scholars have developed new theoretical understandings of the terms of these debates and questioned how these are bound up with cultural conceptualizations of citizenship, education – in schools, universities and less formal educational contexts – has often been a site where contestations of the religious and the secular have been acutely felt.

The aim of this symposium is to consider the interrelation between conceptions of the religious, the secular, citizenship and education, and to explore how these issues affect the study of religion in higher education. We hope to attract presentations of sufficient quality to lead to an edited publication.

The day will be highly participative and engaged. The symposium will be organised as a single stream so that the day is as much about discussion as it is about presentation, and therefore the number of formal papers will be limited.

Papers are invited from students, teachers, and researchers in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, geography, theology, history, psychology, political science, religious studies and others where religion is taught and studied. Empirical, methodological, and theoretical papers are welcomed.

Presenters will circulate a five-page summary of their paper before the day so that all participants can come prepared for discussion. Presentations will last 10 minutes and will be structured into three sessions, each followed by a discussant drawing out key points. The day will conclude with a discussant-led, focused panel discussion.

Key questions to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:

  • What are the relationships between the religious, the secular and the public sphere, and how do these affect the study of religion, in both universities and schools?
  • How do different historical constructions of religion and secularity shape understandings of the civil sphere and citizenship, and what are the implications of this for the study of religion?
  • Does the increased public visibility of religion in national and global contexts affect how we study it?
  • What is the role of religious education (school and/or university) in forming citizens and shaping understandings of citizenship?
  • Are there distinct regional, national or international conceptions of the secular?
  • Are there distinct regional, national or international conceptions of citizenship?
  • How do different disciplines approach and study these conceptions, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches?

Abstracts of 200 words are invited by September 15 2012. Please send these to: Dr Paul-François Tremlett p.f.tremlett@open.ac.uk

Costs: £36.00 for BSA/SocRel members; £45.00 for non-members; £20.00 for SocRel/BSA Postgraduate members; £25.00 for Postgraduate non-members.