Autumn 2023 brought another tranche of applicants from outside the Faculty of Divinity to join the Cambridge Interfaith Research Forum, all of whom we are now pleased to welcome as members.
Researchers often connect with us in hope of fostering or enhancing collaborations that advance their research agenda. The Research Forum provides a particular space to make connections, locate differing expertise, and look at things from a new perspective—whatever stage your research has reached.
Participation, planning and religious voice
Professor Flora Samuel joined the University of Cambridge last year as Head of the Department of Architecture. Together with Dr Ruchit Purohit, she is preparing for the launch of Cambridge’s first Urban Room—an inclusive space for conversations about urban design and planning—building on previous work in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Connecting this with CIP, the hope is to ensure religious experience can be part of the Cambridge conversations. Her recent outputs include a special issue of Buildings & Cities focused on social value, and the book, Housing for Hope and Wellbeing (Routledge, 2023).
Neurodiversity, God-speech, and transcultural communication
Napoleon Katsos is Professor in Experimental Linguistics, specialising on inference: how and why do readers complete the meaning of words and sentences? What happens in linguistic, cognitive and psychological terms where non-literal and figurative interpretation is needed? Through the God and Human Speech project, he has been collaborating with Dr Daniel Weiss to explore resonance between rabbinic texts and neurodiversity. (The co-investigators await news about further funding for this work.)
Also approaching interfaith relations from a linguistic angle is Dr John Walker, whose study of Willem von Humboldt and Transcultural Communication formed the basis of one of last year’s Inter-Religious Research seminars. John has retired from his post as Reader in German Intellectual History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He continues to supervise Cambridge undergraduates, having completed his own undergraduate degree here some years ago—and served a spell as MMLL Director of Studies at Selwyn College. John also convenes a town-and-gown Scriptural Reasoning group.
Religion, development, and peacebuilding
Professor Sriya Iyer is Professor of Economics and Social Science. Her interests span development, religion, health, demography and education, and include studies of Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, the UK and the USA. Her most recent publication is as co-author of “Religion, Covid-19 and Mental Health” in the European Economic Review, 2023 (with Girish Bahal, Kishen Shastry, and Anand Shrivastava). She is also the author of The Economics of Religion in India (Harvard, 2018) and Demography and Religion in India (Oxford, 2002), and co-editor of Advances in the Economics of Religion (International Economic Association & Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Experimental political economist, Dr Nazia Habib is Founder and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD), in the Department of Land Economy, and Founding Director of the Resilience and Sustainable Development Programme (RSDP) in the Department of Engineering. CRSD and RSDP combine engineering and social science methods to conduct empirical research while co-creating actionable ideas with decisionmakers. Current work includes a project on deliberative space, supported by a gift from the Khalili Foundation, looking to identify and promote interfaith insights for peacebuilding. Research outcomes will be shared with and applied by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
A Coptic crossover
Three of our newest connections have an interest in Coptic Christianity and the navigating of religious boundaries in Egypt:
Dr Isaac Friesen is based in Social Anthropology (supported by a Canadian research grant). Having volunteered as a peacebuilder in provincial Egypt, he now studies Muslim attendance of Coptic spaces, as well as exploring religious difference, secularism and migration in Canada and France.
Dr Lisa Agaiby is visiting the Faculty of Divinity during the current academic year, on leave from St Athanasius College, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia where she is Academic Dean and Senior Lecturer in Coptic Studies. Her recent publications include Door of the Wilderness: The Greek, Coptic, and Copto-Arabic Sayings of St Antony of Egypt (2021, with Tim Vivian), a co-edited volume on Copts in Modernity (2021, with Mark Swanson and Nelly Van Doorn-Harder) and The Arabic Life of Antony attributed to Serapion of Thmuis: Cultural Memory Reinterpreted (2018).
Dr Elizabeth Monier is based in the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, where she has been exploring inter-communal relations and the interplay of religious identity and politics in the Middle East. For her doctorate (POLIS 2011) she studied how Coptic Christians used media to negotiate their citizenship and religious difference. More recently, she has published journal articles on religious tolerance in the Arab Gulf States, with a particular focus on Christian organisations (Politics and Religion) and the intersection of minority and citizenship status (Nations and Nationalism 29.1).
From politics and environmentalism, to the armed forces
Dr Camille Lardy holds a twin-position as a Research Fellow (at Emmanuel College) and Teaching & Research Associate in the Department of Social Anthropology. Her work includes a particular interest in French Catholic political theology and environmentalism—a topic exemplified by her doctoral thesis, “Caring for Our Common Home: 'Écologie Intégrale' as Political Theology among French Catholics”.
Dr Joseph Powell’s research primarily explores the spirituality of Rastafari communities in the Caribbean and the UK, as well as examining how those in the movement have and continue to interact with the faith communities around them. For his PhD, he explored ecotheologies through ethnographic fieldwork in St Lucia/Iyanola. As a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, he is now beginning research amongst Rastafari working in the UK Armed Forces as they operate in environments defined by a multitude of other, often larger, faith identities.
Enhancing student networks
The Research Forum is open to researchers at all levels, including MPhil students (normally by recommendation of a supervisor) and PhD candidates. Joining us this term from beyond Divinity are Hannah and Madiha:
Hannah Peterson is a first year PhD student in Sociology. Her doctoral research explores Jewish and Latter-Day Saint responses to Christian Nationalism in the USA, drawing on cultural sociology (under the supervision of Professor Patrick Baert). For her Masters (Sociology & Anthropology) she wrote at thesis on COVID-19’s impact among the Hasidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She has broad experience as a research assistant, including input to work on Haredi science communication, religion and body image, and a mixed-methods study on Israeli and Palestinian students involved in interfaith conflict resolution seminars.
Madiha Noman is in the second year of PhD studies, based in the Faculty of English. She came to Cambridge having recently completed an MA in English Literature at Aligarh Muslim University, India. Her research focuses on Indian Muslim women’s digital cultural production, through prominent content creators (on Instagram, YouTube, etc.). Combining close reading, multimodal discourse analysis, and textual analysis, she aims to contribute to a more holistic and contextual understanding of minoritized religious identities in digital spaces, particularly in India.
About the Research Forum
The Cambridge Interfaith Research Forum was established in 2022, with the goal of enhancing research connectivity at and beyond the University of Cambridge. Those studying and working at the Faculty of Divinity may join at any time. We particularly welcome applications from colleagues and postgraduate students in the wider university—these are subject to the approval of our Management Committee, and reviewed on a termly basis.