Belief and belonging in Kent and beyond
Since launching her book Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) at SECL in May, Dr Abby Day, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies has been busy discussing the book as keynote speaker at several international conferences. It has also received good reviews in media representing different international academic and professional audiences (a key objective of her book), from the world-wide Church Times to UK’s Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the leading American journal, the American Journal of Sociology. Her book is intentionally positioned in contrast to Grace Davie’s famous ‘Believing without Belonging’ thesis, an opposition which has not affected the two scholars’ warm and effective working relationship. In 2013 and 2014, Dr Day will be busy with Mia Lövheim at Sweden’s Uppsala University creating a new edited collection, Grace Davie and the Study of Religion.
In October, Dr Day spent a week in Sweden as a guest of Uppsala University where she presented a public lecture on ‘Believing in Belonging’. This was followed by a panel discussion where Abby and Grace present their theories. In November Abby presented a public lecture at the University of Helsinki on ‘Believing in Belonging’.
Abby extends her thanks once again to the AHRC and ESRC for funding her research at doctoral and postdoctoral stages.
Kent’s International Belief Symposium travels to Phoenix
In March 2012, Day designed a unique three-day symposium for international scholars and Middle Eastern revolutionaries to discuss how belief can operate to promote dialogue in cultural relations. Titled ‘What Does It Mean to Believe?’, the event was funded by the AHRC and the British Council, and hosted at the University. The event successfully drew together activists from Tunisia and Egypt, post-doctoral researchers from the UK, leading UK scholars including SECL’s Professor Gordon Lynch, Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology, and the London School of Economic’s Professor Eileen Barker, and two international scholars: Dr Ariela Keysar, Institute for the Study of Secularism and Society, Hartford, CT and Dr. Saeed Khan, Wayne State University.
Following this, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) hosted Dr Day in November in Phoenix Arizona as part of their annual conference to allow her to replicate the core of the event, including Keysar, Khan and Professor Jay Demerath from the University of Massachusetts. The session drew a standing-only crowd to hear the panel discussion and join in a lively debate about the intersections of religion, belief, culture and ethnicity.
SECL’s Ruth Sheldon, PhD student within Department of Religious Studies, also gave a presentation at the meeting titled ‘Researching Within and Between: Reflexivity and Comparison in a Multi-site Ethnography (MSE) of Israel-Palestine Activism’.
The Art of Doing Everything in 92 Minutes
Dr Day’s popular books, How to Get Research Published in Journals (Aldershot: Gower/Ashgate, 2008) and Winning Research Funding (Aldershot: Gower/Ashgate, 2003) have, for the past decade, been at the heart of her workshops internationally to help researchers get funded and published.
In October, she combined the two in a 92-minute session for Faculty at Uppsala University where she facilitated a workshop on how to teach, research, and publish in the course of an average academic day. Asked why ’92 minutes’ she replied that the substance of her advice is about focusing: ‘They wanted me to conduct a 90-minute session so I agreed, and gave the organiser two minutes at the beginning for introductions.’
In November, Dr Day was invited by the Finnish Society for the Study of Religion to attend a two-day postgraduate training event where she taught a similar session about starting out in publishing and funding. She also chaired a session on work-in-progress and heard several fascinating accounts of new research into, primarily, religion and popular culture.
Multi-sited Ethnography in the UK and Sweden
As part of her Visiting Fellowship at the School of Global Studies in the University of Sussex Dr Day designed and taught in summer term a one-day course for the MSc in Social Research Methods on ‘Multi-sited Ethnography’ (MSE). In October, she taught MSE through a two-hour workshop for post-graduate students at Uppsala. Her empirical examples considered how MSE methods helped her understand the nature of ‘belief’ through following debates and lived experiences in the UK, Egypt and Tunisia.
ESRC Peer Review College
Dr Day has also been appointed to the ESRC Peer Review College. This is the main body that reviews funding applications on behalf of the ESRC. An important part of the role is to undertake systematic updates in peer review skills, which is a significant skill that can contribute to the Department of Religious Studies’ development.