Unit for the Study of Religion and Spirituality (USRS)
Members of USRS
Stephen Hunt (Director) (Department of Sociology and Criminology)
Email: Stephen3.Hunt@uwe.ac.uk
Dr. Hunt's primary interests are in contemporary Christianity and New Religious Movements. More specifically, he has researched the areas of Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Movement, the 'New' Black Pentecostal churches, the Lesbian and Gay Christian movement, millenarianism, Alpha courses, religion and healing, and the sociology of theology. Dr. Hunt has explored these themes through over one hundred publications and over sixty national and international conference papers. He is on the editorial board of the journal PentecoStudies (University of Amsterdam), and a member of the group for Millenarian Studies and, similarly, a member of the group for the Study of Canadian Pentecostalism. Book publications include:
David Green (Deputy Director) (Department of Sociology and Criminology)
Email: David2.Green@uwe.ac.uk
After a first degree in sociology and social psychology, Dr.Green undertook community mental health work in London for several years. He then took an MA in Applied Social Research and eventually became a research associate in the department of social work at Brunel University, where he worked on two major research projects - a UK-wide participatory poverty research project, Poverty First Hand culminating in the book of the same name; and, a comparative study of brokerage in a number of social work teams in the UK and Sweden. Later, he took a PhD, here at UWE, exploring the relationships between contemporary Paganisms and psycho-social theory, before becoming a lecturer, then senior lecturer, where he now teaches modules on comparative sociology, magical studies and social exclusion. Dr.Green is a member of the editorial board of The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic and moderates the Academic Study of Magic e-list on jiscmail. His current research interests lie in the sociology of contemporary magic and esoteric subcultures, particularly the relationships between magic and modernity, magic and psychoanlaysis; magic and gender; Satanisms and the Satanic moral panic; and, Left Hand Path magic. Recent relevant publications include:
Virginia Bainbridge (Department of History)
Email: Virginia.Bainbridge@uwe.ac.uk
Virginia Bainbridge is Assistant Editor of the Victoria County History of Wiltshire, a UWE research project. So far 19 volumes on Wiltshire's history have been published, which include extensive coverage of religious activities from earliest times to the present. Virginia is interested in the transmission of ideas in society and how they effect religious change, focusing on the European Reformation. Her work for the VCH has given her a broad perspective on changing social patterns and local institutions. Her thesis was on later medieval gilds and fraternities, lay devotional groups. Her current research focuses on women and spirituality. She is writing a book on a group of contemplative nuns, the English Bridgettines 1400-1600, to be called 'Prayer and Power'. She is a practicing Christian, married to a Chan Buddhist, and she is a tertiary of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, an Anglican religious order. Her publications include:-
John Bird (Department of Sociology and Criminology)
Email: John.Bird@uwe.ac.uk
John Bird is currently Co-Director of the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. As such, he is interested in applying psycho-social methodologies and psychoanalytic ideas to a range of issue, including religion. In particular, he is interested in the psycho-dynamics of fundamentalisms, ands the roles that emotions and affectivity play in religious beliefs and practices. He is also interested in the ways that we teach sociological approaches to religion and is author of a major A level sociology of religion textbook.
Peter Broks (Department of Cultural Studies)
Email: Peter.Broks@uwe.ac.uk
The principal focus of Professor Brok's work are the cultural boundaries of science, particularly the relationship between science and the public but also the relationship between science and religion. Elsewhere his interest in religion forms part of a larger project of the history of science in Victorian and Edwardian magazines. His interest in the area also informs his ideas exploration of Taoist ideas of the "space between" as a way to understand the self, and as the basis for a research methodology. Peter Broks was also a contributor to a conference on science and spirituality held in Pune in 2002 and he retains contacts with the Jesuit seminary there.
Lita Crociani-Windland (Department of Sociology and Criminology)
Email: Lita.Crociani-Windland@uwe.ac.uk
Lita Crociani-Windland is a part-time lecturer and research student at the University of the West of England. She is also a director of the Group Relations Network West of England and member of the Centre for Critical Theory and Centre for Psychosocial Studies, UWE. Her research interests concern the sociology of affect, Group Relations and psychosocial studies, continental philosophy and comparative sociology. Her professional background includes Italian translation and Special Needs education. Much of her research concerns festivals in Central Italy, where Marian and patron Saints' devotion plays an important role. This has led to an exploration of the relation between social dynamics and religious symbols, particularly concerning representations of the feminine. Publications include:
Govinda Dickman (Department of Cultural Studies)
Email: Govinda.Dickman@uwe.ac.uk
Govinda Dickman is visiting lecturer in Documentary Film and Digital Media, and is a professional media-maker. He does not work in a specific area of media production, choosing rather to regard medium as a relative and mutative property in perpetual search of context and function. His field of research related to religion and spirituality includes ' Internal Alchemy' - comparing yogas (or systems of transformation) from diverse religious and cultural traditions. Believing that the ontological assumptions of discreet scientific methodologies and perspectives have an historical tendency to fragment, predetermine or preclude the discovery of "living human truths", he is currently attempting to synthesise from a number of disciplines a methodology for the study of meditative states & numinous experience. Initially, he is doing this by problematising the act of asking (for instance, the question "What is Yoga?") within the western academic tradition...
Lois Duff (Department of Economics)
Email: Lois.Duff@uwe.ac.uk
Dr. Duff's concerns are with the concepts of spiritual well-being and spiritual development. She is specifically interested in how they are being articulated among different disciplines, particularly in education and in economics. In education, her interest is with spiritual development and the need to distinguish between mechanical and non-mechanical learning. In the field of economics her concern is with the conclusions economists have reached while neglecting the role of the spiritual in life. Dr.Duff's understanding of spiritual well-being is that it constitutes a state of being reflecting an awareness of the divine in life, which in turn provides the individual with a sense of identity, peace, purpose and direction in life. Dr.Duff's publications in the area include: 'Spiritual Development and Education: a Contemplative View', International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 8 (3), December, 2004.
Peter Hampson (Department of Psychology)
Email: Peter.Hampson@uwe.ac.uk
Professor Hampson is a cognitive psychologist who, until recently, published in the field of imagery, learning and memory, and neural network models of cognition, maintaining, however, that (cognitive) psychology must be concerned with meaning as well as information processing mechanisms. This, combined with a parallel interest in the philosophy and psychology of religion, has led him to examine the psychology-theology relationship as part of the wider science and religion debate. Professor Hampson's specific interests include: the implications for interdisciplinary dialogue of the recent 'faith and reason' debate; conflict and compatibilism between religious and secular models of the person; the relationship between (religious) anthropology and ontology; religious language and doctrine. He is currently exploring the potential of cultural psychology for increased understanding of religion and spirituality. Such psychology, he suggests, needs to avoid both biological and social reductionism, and must be sufficiently ontologically open for sophisticated interdisciplinary dialogue with religious studies to occur. Forthcoming publications include
Herb Hahn (Centre for Psycho-Social Studies)
Email: Herb.Hahn@uwe.ac.uk
Herb Hahn is a visiting senior research fellow in the Centre for Psycho-Social studies in HLSS and is involved in exploring notions of Mind, Body and Spirit. He is interested in exploring the possibility of engaging in some of the prelminary discussions in a future week-end workshop.
Cassandra Howes (University Chaplaincy)
Cassandra Howes is currently chairperson of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and chaplain of the University of the West of England.
Diana Jeater (Department of History)
Email: Diana.Jeater@uwe.ac.uk
Dr.Jeator is interested in how complex ideas about spiritual beliefs can be translated across cultures, and is specifically concerned with the translation of Christianity into African vernaculars in early 20th century southern Africa. As well as the lexical challenges involved in finding equivalences for 'God' or 'ancestral spirit' in translation, she is also interested in the package of ideas about cultural and moral standards that accompanied western Christian evangelism, and how those ideas were interpreted and reformulated in African communities. Dr. Jeater is currently investigating whether translation worked primarily as a hegemonic practice, inserting new ways of thinking into African communities, or whether the act of translation instead forced missionaries to re-evaluate their own norms. This work revolves around a case study of Mt Silinda Mission, an American Methodist station which was founded in the 1890s in what is now Chimanimani District of Zimbabwe. The research is disseminated in her book, Law, Language andScience: The Invention of the 'Native Mind' in Southern Rhodesia. Dr.Jeater is Chair of the British Zimbabwe Society and on the editorial board of The Journal of Southern African Studies. She is currently head of the Department of History, UWE.
Richard Kimberlee (School of Health and Social Care)
Email: Richard.Kimberlee@uwe.ac.uk
Is organiser of the Centre for Local Democracy, UWE. Along with Marion Jackson he has just completed research into understanding the barrier to faith group involvement in regeneration funding initiatives - findings published in a paper in Local Governance, 30 (2), Summer, 2004. He is interested in the impact and role of faith groups in community initiatives.
Prof. Ullrich Kockel (Department of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies)
Email: Ullrich.Kockel@uwe.ac.uk
Professor Kockel's overarching interest in the area of religion is in comparative ethnology and folk-life studies, with primary geographical focus on the islands of Ireland and Great Britain, and secondary foci on Europe, and - more recently - North America. Substantive areas of interest include cosmology and ethics, which he has approached from various angles at different points in his career. Economics as a secular religion (and conversely, the religious foundations of much of economic thought) has been a long-running theme. Other topics that interest Professor Kockel's include folk concepts of human-nature encounters; cultural ecology and ethics; the spiritual dimension of place; alternative/ utopian social movements; and Celtic Christianity. His publications include:
Joshua Schwieso (Department of Psychology)
Email: Joshua.Schwieso@uwe.ac.uk
Joshua Schwieso is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology. His initial interest in the area focused upon Victorian millenarian sects. He gained my PhD in Sociology of Religion for the study of such a group, at the University of Reading in 1994 ('Deluded Inmates, Frantic Ravers and Communists: A Sociological Study of the Agapemone, A sect of Victorian Apocalyptic Millenarians'). Dr.Schwieso created, and has been teaching since 1998, a Level 3 module on Psychology of Religion. He is currently putting together a book on the Psychology of Religion. He is especially concerned that the academic study of religion should reflect the actual practices of religion. He is also interested in the spatial ecology of religious ritual - in particular the layout and meaning of religious buildings. His publications include:
