Opportunity: Collaborative PhD on inter-religious encounter

Structured inter-religious encounter and anti-discrimination education: a study

Applications are invited for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, in partnership with the Faith & Belief Forum (F&BF).  This fully-funded studentship is available from October 2025. Further information about the value of an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP award is available on the DTP’s studentships page. Please consider that the funding is for a Collaborative Doctoral Award (with a specified UK partner) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, who requires that interdisciplinary projects are at least 50% focused in the Arts and Humanities. The closing date is 3 December 2024.

Project overview 

This practice-based PhD project critically investigates approaches to structured interreligious encounter and exchange as deployed in the work of the Faith & Belief Forum, whose programmes span schools, universities, communities and workplaces. Augmenting previous studies of interfaith work, the project will include a unique focus on the interaction between such programmes and the goal of reducing prejudice and discrimination, whether in terms of religion or belief, gender, race, nationality or other intersectional identities. 

This PhD will consider questions such as:

1. What methodologies are currently used to guide structured interreligious encounter and on what norms and assumptions do those methodologies rest?
2. Which methodologies are perceived to ‘work’ and by whom?  What does/could ‘success’ look like?
3. What are the affordances and/or limitations of the different methods in relation to these definitions of success?
4. Are there other affordances and limitations that require to be accounted for, in terms of the impact and/or legacies of this work? 5) What measures, methods and/or criteria are appropriate to assessing the impact of such work and what procedures are necessary to ensure that such measurements are meaningful, robust, and replicable? 

The successful applicant will have broad access to F&BF’s programmes, including internal planning discussions and archival documents. It might be beneficial to examine the F&BF's website (faithbeliefforum.org) carefully and to read about its antecedent, the Three Faiths Forum - see, for example, chapter 10 in Emma Klein, Sir Sigmund Sternberg: The Knight with Many Hats (Vallentine Mitchell, 2012). 

Studentship candidates are encouraged to articulate a narrower focus and approach, selecting specific case studies from within F&BF’s work and/or in comparison to other organisations active in interfaith and/or anti-discrimination work, and to engage with mixed methods as appropriate.  

It is anticipated that this project will influence the shape of F&BF’s future work, especially the measurements and reporting of success.  

Supervision 

The studentship will be supervised by Professor Esra Ozyurek (Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values and Academic Director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme) and Dr Daniel Weiss (Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies), both in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. At the Faith & Belief Forum, supervision will be provided by the Head of Programmes, Carrie Alderton, with additional support available from a community of scholars affiliated with F&BF. 

In addition to a bespoke induction at F&BF (spanning everything from safeguarding to strategy), the researcher will have opportunities to learn about and observe work on the School Linking project, targeted programmes including the annual Youth Summit and London Awards, ParliaMentors (campus cohorts accompanied by MPs) and their alumni, the new National Lottery-funded Restorative Justice Project, and any additional active programmes. The researcher will be eligible to undertake in-house training packages including Encountering Religion & Belief and the residential ParliaMentors induction. 

Joining this community of long-term research-practice partners offers the successful candidate the opportunity to gain experience in the design, application and assessment of methods for structured inter-religious encounter in schools, communities and workplaces--as well as in university settings, both via F&BF and the work of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme (est. 2002).  

How to apply 

We invite applications from candidates from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Applicants will ideally have a background in a relevant humanities and/or social sciences discipline.  Prior experience of any of the following may be beneficial: teaching and/or curriculum design, building monitoring, learning and evaluation systems, data analysis. Applicants should meet the eligibility criteria for Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC studentships. 

For an informal discussion about the opportunity and how you might frame your approach to the CDA project, please contact Professor Esra Özyürek c/o cip@divinity.cam.ac.uk in the first instance. 

You should apply to the Theology & Religious Studies PhD programme at the University of Cambridge by 3 December 2024 (midday, UK time), indicate your interest in being considered for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP studentship and submit a completed copy of the OOC DTP Application Form at the same time. 

See the advert on the University of Cambridge's jobsite: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/48263/

logo_for_website_faith_and_belief_2.png