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The AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme was a five-year strategic research initiative funded by two UK research councils: the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, running from 2007 to 2012. It funded 75 projects across UK universities investigating various aspects of the complex relationships between religion and society, both historical and contemporary.
Research supported includes the website "British Religion in Numbers", [1] providing statistics on religion in Britain led by Professor David Voas at Manchester University. Other work includes Professor Kim Knott at Leeds University's restudy of British media coverage of religion and spirituality and an investigation of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh shrine practices across the Punjab led by Dr Tej Purewal, also at Manchester. Phase 2 of the Programme focused on Youth and Religion specifically, supporting projects like Dr Basia Spalek at Birmingham University's research into police partnerships with young Muslims.
The Religion and Society Programme is hosted at Lancaster University, and directed by Professor Linda Woodhead helped by Dr Rebecca Catto (Research Associate) and Peta Ainsworth (Administrator). The Programme helps to organize various events such as a day at the British Library asking ‘Where next for religion in the public sphere?’ in July 2010 and a closed seminar asking ‘Child abuse in the Catholic Church – what can be learned?’ at Heythrop College London in November 2010.
Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
André Beteille, is an Indian sociologist, writer and academician. He is known for his studies of the caste system in South India. He has served with educational institutions in India such as Delhi School of Economics, North Eastern Hill University, and Ashoka University.
Sajida S. Alvi is an academic of Pakistani origin in Canada. She is a historian of Islam in South Asia and was the inaugural appointment to the chair in Urdu Language and Culture at the Institute of Islamic Studies from September 1987 until her retirement in June 2010.
Sylvia Theresa Walby is a British sociologist, currently Professor of Sociology, Director of the Violence and Society Centre at the City University of London. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for distinction in sociology. She is noted for work in the fields of the domestic violence, patriarchy, gender relations in the workplace and globalisation.
Rodney William Stark was an American sociologist of religion who was a longtime professor of sociology and of comparative religion at the University of Washington. At the time of his death he was the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university's Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
Gabriele Marranci is a registered professional counsellor and psychotherapist specialised in Internal Family System Therapy or IFS, Acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT and Somatic psychology. He is a member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), and the founder of Act Right Now Counselling Services.
Linda Jane Pauline Woodhead is a British academic specialising in the religious studies and sociology of religion at King's College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She is best known for her work on religious change since the 1980s, and for initiating public debates about faith. She has been described by Matthew Taylor, head of the Royal Society of Arts, as "one of the world's leading experts on religion".
James Daniel Holt is a British scholar of Latter-day Saint religion and history and is Associate Professor of Religious Education at the University of Chester.
Peter Bernard Clarke was a British scholar of religion and founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Religion.
James Arthur Beckford was a British sociologist of religion. He was professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1988/1989, he served as president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and from 1999 to 2003, as the president of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.
Jenny Taylor is a cultural analyst and journalist and founder of Lapido Media, a consultancy specialising in religious literacy in world affairs. She has travelled widely, especially in the Islamic world, visiting the South Asian headquarters of Muslim groups settled in Great Britain, and writing and commenting on the work of civil society organisations all over Asia and Africa. She is an expert on the connection between faith and culture, on which she has addressed parliamentary and Commonwealth gatherings. Her doctorate is from SOAS in London on Islam and secularisation. She is an advisor to the Relationships Foundation and a former Whitefield Institute grantee. She is the author of A Wild Constraint: the Case for Chastity.
Bryan Stanley Turner is a British and Australian sociologist. He was born in January 1945 in Birmingham, England. Turner has held university appointments in England, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Holland, Singapore and the United States. He was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge (1998–2005) and Research Team Leader for the Religion Cluster at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2005–2008).
Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi' was a Professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and the Chair of the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. His primary areas of academic specialization were the Middle East and International Relations. He also had a special interest in the study and practice of interfaith dialogue between the Islamic and Christian religious traditions.
Shabbir Akhtar was a British Muslim philosopher, poet, researcher, writer and multilingual scholar. He was on the Faculty of Theology and Religions at the University of Oxford. His interests included political Islam, Quranic exegesis, revival of philosophical discourse in Islam, Islamophobia, extremism, terrorism and Christian-Muslim relations as well as Islamic readings of the New Testament. Shabbir Akhtar was also a Søren Kierkegaard scholar. Akhtar's articles have appeared both in academic journals and in the UK press. Several of his books have been translated into the major Islamic languages.
Marcia J. Bunge is an American Lutheran theologian. She is Professor of Religion and the Bernhardson Distinguished Chair of Lutheran Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
Lori Gail Beaman is a Canadian academic. She is a professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies of the University of Ottawa, and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and Social Change. She has published work on religious diversity, religious freedom, and the intersections of religion and law. She was made a fellow of the Academy of the Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015, received an Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2017 and received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in 2018.
Grace Riestra Claire Davie is a British sociologist who serves as professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Exeter. She is the author of the book Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging.
Christine Schirrmacher is a German academic who specialises in Islamic studies. She is professor of Islamic studies at the University of Bonn and at the Evangelical Theological Faculty (ETF), Leuven.
Sophie Gilliat-Ray, OBE, is professor of Religious and Theological Studies and Director for the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK at Cardiff University.
Mathew Guest is a British sociologist and professor of sociology of religion at Durham University. Guest is the author or editor of numerous academic books, reports, journal articles and essays. His publications cover various topics in the sociology of religion, particularly evangelical Christianity in the UK, value transmission within clergy families, and the status of Christianity and Islam within university contexts.