Archives

• Religion and Public Engagement

  Vol. 25 (2023)

  The 2022 Conference of the BASR was hosted by the Open University in Milton Keynes. The theme was Religion and Public Engagement and this issue of the JBASR showcases some of the insights from the conference. The keynote from Jas Singh, “Becoming an accidental activist: Religion, Academia and Community Engagement” provides a useful starting point for considering what we hope to achieve, and what we can achieve, through public engagement.

• From Religious Studies to the Study of Religion/s: Disciplinary Futures for the 21st Century

  Vol. 24 (2022)

  The BASR Conference 2021 was hosted online by the University of Edinburgh. Welcoming delegates from around the world, the aim of the conference was to discuss disciplinary and interdisciplinary pasts and futures in Religious Studies or the Study of Religion/s, with a particular focus on the future shape of the field in the 21^st Century. You will find the theme reflected in these five papers from the Conference, including the two keynotes from Wanda Alberts and James L. Cox.

  Melanie Prideaux, Coordinating Editor

  Assitant Editor: Jonathon O'Donnell

  We would also like to thank David G. Robertson for website support.

  Photo of New College, Edinburgh, by Suzanne Owen

• Teaching and Learning

  Vol. 23 (2021)

  The BASR 2020 annual conference was a one-day conference held online, hosted by the Open University's Department of Religious Studies and focussed on Teaching and Learning in the Study of Religion. There were two panels, one on Teaching and Learning and the other on Religion and Worldviews. These panels were recorded and are available here: https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/religious-studies/?p=1144. We have a selection of those papers in this journal volume as well as a couple of additional ones. The two sections were guest edited by Wendy Dossett and Stefanie Sinclair - see their introductions.

  Suzanne Owen, Coordinating Editor

  Assitant Editor: Jonathon O'Donnell

  We would also like to thank David G. Robertson for website support.

  Image: S. Owen 2022

• Visualising Cultures

  Vol. 22 (2020)

  The articles in this volume were first presented at the annual British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) conference held at Leeds Trinity University 2-4 September, 2019. Its theme was “Visualising Cultures: Media, Technology and Religion” and was organised by Dr Suzanne Owen with Dr Ilaria Vecchi, then a PhD student, and Dr Stefano Odorico, Director of the International Research Centre for Interactive Storytelling (IRIS), based at Leeds Trinity. The conference also welcomed papers employing a collaborative or inter-disciplinary methodology in the study of religion more generally.

  The BASR was grateful to have Dr James Kapaló as the keynote speaker at this conference who delivered a rich and engaging paper exploring photographic and filmic representations of religious clandestinity produced by or with the help of the secret police in Central and Eastern Europe. We are pleased to be able to include his article based on his keynote paper.

  The other articles either engage with visual methods or the visual as data, or focuss on collaborations and interdisciplinarity (or a combination of these). This issue begins with an op-ed from Jonathan Tuckett on his thoughts about the task of Religious Studies, drawing from Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation".  The coordinating editor would like to thank Tuckett for submitting this to the BASR committee as I think it makes some pertinent remarks about the state of RS in the UK and what this means for early career academics.

  Coordinating editor: Dr Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University

  Assistent editor: Dr Jonathon O'Donnell, University College Dublin

  Cover image: just prior to the start of the conference, I walked on Ilkley Moor nearby with another participant and took this photo of the Cow and Calf rocks.

• Borders and Boundaries: 'Religion' on the Periphery

  Vol. 21 (2019)

  The articles in this special joint issue of Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions and the Journal Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions were presented as papers at the joint BASR/JISASR conference Borders and Boundaries: ‘Religion’ on the Periphery held at Queen’s University Belfast from 3-5 September 2018.

  This edition opens with the two keynote lectures from the conference given by Naomi Goldenberg and Gladys Ganiel, which are listed as jointly published by both journals.

  Coordinating Editor of JBASR – Dr Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University
  General Editor of JISASR – Dr James Kapaló, University College Cork  

  Table of Contents

  KEYNOTE LECTURES

  'Religion' and its Limits – Reflections on Discursive Borders and Boundaries [pp 1-15]
  Naomi GOLDENBERG

  Power from the Periphery? ‘Extra-Institutional Religion’ and the Prospects for Change – Insights from the Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds [pp 16-34]
  Gladys GANIEL 

  ARTICLES IN JBASR

  The Border, the Laggan and the Professor
  Malcolm MACOURT

  The Marginality of ‘Irish Mormonism”: Confronting Irish Boundaries of Belonging
  Hazel O’BRIEN

  Itako on the screen: using visual ethnography for understanding how these Japanese shamans are adapting to social change
  Ilaria VECCHI

  Post-lineage yoga: adventures in social media engagement
  Theodora WILDCROFT

  Marginalized centre: Wana people and the geography of power
  Giorgio SCALICI

  ARTICLES IN JISASR [click to view]

  Before and after Science: Esoteric Traces in the Formation of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Subject [PDF]
  John BOYLE

  The Congregation as a Station for Social Integration: An Analysis of Congregants’ Personal Networks with an Interpretation Using Giddens’ Theory of Structuration [PDF], pp. 60-83
  Adrian STRINGER

  The Tradition of Segnature: Underground Indigenous Practices in Italy [PDF]
  Angela PUCA

• Narratives of Religion

  Vol. 20 (2018)

• Festschrift: Essays in Honour of Ursula King

  Vol. 19 (2017)

  This collection of essays in honour of Professor Ursula King is a testament to the career of a truly inspirational and ground-breaking academic in the study of religions.

  Guest editors: Dominic Corrywright and Bettina E. Schmidt

  Coordinating editor: Suzanne Owen

  Contributions from Peggy Morgan, Kim Knott, Sian Melvill Hawthorne, Morny Joy, Rosalind I.J. Hackett, Tina Beattie and Brian Bocking.

  Photo of Ursula King by Suzanne Owen

• Religion in the Local and Global

  Vol. 18 (2016)

  Welcome to the new edition of JBASR (formerly DISKUS) on its new website.

  These papers were originally presented at the annual 2015 conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions at the University of Kent, 7-9 September, on the theme of Religion in the Local and Global: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Challenges. It was also an occasion to celebrate 50 years of the study of religion at Kent.

  The three articles included in this edition of JBASR have strong theoretical concerns, with Richard Amesbury looking at debates over circumcision in Germany, Claire Wanless theorising individualised religion, and Richard Saville-Smith applying the psychiatric idea of disruption to religious experience.

  For the first time, we are also including book reviews, edited by David Robertson of The Open University. This edition contains reviews of individual volumes in the Norton Anthology of World Religions.

  Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University, Coordinating Editor of JBASR

  Photo of the Pantheon oculus in Rome by Suzanne Owen

• Religion, Art and Performance

  Vol. 17 No. 3 (2015)

  The two themes of the BASR conference at the Open University 3-5th September were 'Religion, Art and Performance' and 'Cutting Edge'. The papers invited for submission t this edition of Diskus related primarily to the first conference theme.

  The first article is a study of three Maori films by Louise Child, titled 'Maori Arts as Film Art: An Analysis of Ritual and Myth in Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors and Te Rua'. The next article by Eva Seegers, 'The Innovative Stūpa Project in Andalusia, Spain', is, as the subtitle indicates, 'A Discussion on Visual Representations of Tibetan Buddhist Art in Europe,' with a particular focus on one on the Costa del Sol in Andalusia. The third leads us to consider 'performance', with the relationship between spirits and the body in Rebeccas Lynch's article 'The Devil in the Details: Materiality and the Spirit in a Trinidadian Village'.

  In time we hope to include Leonard Primiano's keynote address, 'The Ethnography of a Liar: The Question of Deception in the Performance of a Religous Life History', about Ann Ameen in Newfoundland, as well as articles by Robert Wallis, on 'Destabilising the universality of art/shamanism – from cave painting to the white cube', and Marion Bowman, on 'Making a Scene: Religion, Art and Performance in the Kraków szopka tradition'.

• Research among spirits, ghosts and deities

  Vol. 17 No. 2 (2015)

  Research among spirits, ghosts and deities is the topic of this special issue of Diskus about studying non-ordinary realities. The articles were developed from presentations delivered at the annual conference of the British Association for Study of Religions held at the Open University in Milton Keynes in September 2014.

• Interrogating Integrity: reflections on the insider/outsider debate

  Vol. 17 No. 1 (2015)

  Guest editors: Aston Katie, Helen Cornish and Aimee Joyce. This special edition of DISKUS will develop successful roundtable discussions held at the BASR conference at Milton Keynes in 2014 on the insider/outsider status in research in faith communities. The special edition will offer reflexive perspectives on research experience and will be relevant to researchers across academic disciplines and research institutes. It will provide a valuable counterpoint to current publications concerned with these issues.

• Religion, Migration, Mutation

  Vol. 16 No. 3 (2014)

  Editorial Introduction

  DISKUS 16 arises from the annual conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions hosted by the BASR at Liverpool Hope University, 3-6 September 2013. The conference (was also a Special Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions [IAHR]) was very well attended with 70 panels, plus three keynote lectures. Two special editions of DISKUS emerged out of the many organised panels: DISKUS 16.1 on Religion and Music, guest edited by Owen Coggins, and DISKUS 16.2 on The Problem with Numbers in the Study of Religions, guest edited by Bettina Schmidt, published earlier in the year.

  This final edition, DISKUS 16.3, contains a selection of papers touching the 2013 conference theme ‘Religion, Migration, Mutation’. In the first article, Brian Bocking, Laurence Cox and Shin'ichi Yoshinaga challenge assumptions by scholars about the earliest Buddhist missions to the West and demonstrate that the Japanese-sponsored ‘Buddhist Propagation Society’ in 1889, led by Irish-born Charles Pfoundes, predates other known missions.

  The second article, by Mel Prideaux with Jo Merrygold, provides an intellectual history of The Community Religions Project, founded in the mid-1970s by Michael Pye, Ursula King and William Weaver at the University of Leeds, which conducted ethnographic studies of religious diversity and pluralism in the Leeds-Bradford area, challenging religious and ethnic categories and highlighting methodological issues in order to provide a framework for studying religions in the UK.

  The third article provides a contemporary study of a ‘migrant religion’ in a particular context, ‘Santo Daime in Ireland: A “Work†in Process’ by Gillian Watt, focussing on ritual activity. Especially under consideration is the conflict with law over the use of ayahuasca, ‘Daime’, and Ireland’s conflicting responses to new religious activities in a ‘post-catholic’ Republic.

  The fourth article, ‘Elsewhere: seeking alternatives to European understandings of “religionâ€,’ by Graham Harvey is based on his keynote address and includes the question of how one would show aliens ‘religion’, opening up the problem of categorisation. In order to overcome the European legacy in the study of religion, Harvey proposes we start ‘elsewhere’ to bring in alternative perspectives. This and the other three articles challenge us to reflect on our approaches to the study of (what the scholar has called) ‘religion’, whether local, ‘migrant’ or elsewhere.

  Suzanne Owen,

  DISKUS coordinating editor,

  2 December 2014

• The Problem with Numbers in the Study of Religions

  Vol. 16 No. 2 (2014)

  Guest Editor: Bettina Schmidt

• Religion and Music Special Issue

  Vol. 16 No. 1 (2014)

  Guest editor: Owen Coggins

• Papers arising from BASR conference 2012

  Vol. 15 (2013)

  Editorial Introduction

  This, the 15th edition of DISKUS, arises from the annual conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions that took place 5-7 September 2012 at the University of Winchester. The theme of the conference was ‘Borders, Boundaries and Transgressions: within and between religions’. The many excellent papers presented at the conference engaged with the theme in diverse ways, as indicated by the papers included here, which also highlight the international connections of the BASR conference, both in terms of content and presenters. ‘Religious Emotions and Religious Peacebuilding: The Case of Bojayá (Colombia)’, by Sandra Rios of Aberdeen University, broadens the concept of ‘religious peacebuilding’ by introducing aspects of religious emotions and social memory in her sociological study of the 2002 massacre at a Catholic church. The paper by Nour Farra-Haddad of Saint Joseph University, ‘Dismantling Religious Boundaries by Sharing the Baraka through Pilgrimages in Lebanon’, gives an account of Muslim and Christian activities at the shrines of popular saints and prophets, showing a high degree of ‘porousness’ between putatively different religions.
  
  It is also a pleasure to include the keynote address by Douglas Pratt of the University of Waikato in New Zealand and currently President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions (AASR). His paper on ‘Exclusivist Boundaries and Extremist Transgressions: Persistence and Problems of Religion’ sparked lively discussion at the conference as it outlined a model for understanding the nature of the ‘persistence of religion’ by looking at the problem of exclusivism and extremism. 
  
  Many thanks to the BASR president, Graham Harvey, for continued support during the handing-over of DISKUS to myself, the new coordinating editor.

  Suzanne Owen

  25 October 2013

• Teaching and Learning Special Edition

  Vol. 14 (2013)

• Papers arising from BASR conference 2011

  Vol. 13 (2012)

  This issue of DISKUS arises from the 2011 BASR annual conference which was hosted at Durham University. The theme of the conference was ritual knowledge and knowing. The following articles contreibute significantly to understanding of and debate about ritual and ways of knowing. They illustrate the vitality of ritual studies within and beyond the study of religion(s) not only by the diversity of empirical data analysed but also by the diversity of approaches taken. We are therefore offered both facts and approaches to consider and bring into dialogue with our own research and teaching interests. I hope you will find these articles as interesting and provocative as I have.

  Graham Harvey (President, BASR, and ex-coordinating editor of Diskus)

• Papers arising from BASR conference 2010

  Vol. 12 (2011)

  Editorial Introduction

  This issue of DISKUS arises from the 2010 BASR annual conference which was hosted at Birmingham University. It has been somewhat delayed in production but contains some important and interesting articles. These include Prof Eileen Barker's discussion of ageing in New Religions, Dr Amy Whitehead's discussion statue devotion among Catholics and Goddess devotees, and a review essay by Prof Peter Harvey.

  In this issue, for the first time, articles are published as pdf files. We hope this makes it more straightforward to cite work from the journal, as well as maintaining its high quality.

  Finally, I am now handing over the role of editorial co-ordinator to Dr Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University College.

• Vol. 11 (2010)

• Vol. 10 (2008)

• Vol. 9 (2008)

• Vol. 8 (2007)

• Vol. 7 (2006)

• Vol. 6 (2000)

• Vol. 5 (1999)