CIP postdoc Dr Anastasia Badder has been spending a day-a-week working with the Faith & Belief Forum, a national NGO. The goal is to spend nine months identifying synergies, testing scope for research collaborations, and (when possible) observing current interfaith practice “in the wild”.
Reflecting on the second quarter, Anastasia writes:
As in my first quarter with F&BF, this quarter led to a series of exciting activities that advanced our joint work, created new lines of connection between F&BF and UCAM colleagues, and offered novel points of reflection on research-practice relationships and interfaith work. At the same time, our ongoing exchanges surfaced new challenges for our working relationship and for research—practice at large.
This past quarter has really revolved around brainstorming new ideas for collaborative projects. At first glance, many of those ideas appeared to speak more or less to the personal interests of everyone involved, as well as those of various of our colleagues and our organizations. But as we have dug into the details of some of those ideas, incongruences have become more apparent.
Identity as sticking point
One specific sticking point has been the notion of “identity”. In my experience, identity tends not to work so well as a conceptual tool: it is so expansive as to be nearly meaningless and doesn’t offer researchers much analytical purchase. For F&BF on the other hand, identity is a key concept, tool, and experience that frames much of their work and resonates meaningfully with their vision of and approach to interfaith, as well as with their stakeholders.
Together, we wondered whether this disconnect was a matter of terminology: maybe we were interested in the same things but using different words to refer to them. But as we continued to think about identity together, it became clear that was not the case. Where F&BF’s approach to interfaith projects nearly always begins from the individual and knowing oneself, I felt, as do many in anthropology and allied fields (see for instance Hastrup 2016 on climate action or Andaya & Cooper 2025 on resilience) that a focus on individual identities and actors can miss the structural issues of or depoliticize the phenomena we’re looking at. I have the sense that taking this idea of identity as our driving force for analysis and action risks centering good/bad feelings and personal virtue and (mis)understanding the issues we hope to address as primarily caused and therefore resolved by individual choices.
Acknowledging dynamics
Consider, for instance, phenomena like antisemitism and Islamophobia (as we were in the brainstorming session in which this disconnect surfaced). Could focusing on identity inadvertently move us away from acknowledging and addressing the social and structural dynamics of these issues? Could it also lead to proposed solutions that focus on changing individual feelings? While this is not a negative in itself, I wonder if perhaps it is a stumbling block that continues to limit the potential of interventions aimed at combatting Islamophobia and antisemitism.1
I later learned that the F&BF team has been having similar debates internally. In particular, I understand there has been an ongoing discussion about what kinds of change (individual or systemic) F&BF are seeking as an organization, what approaches different kinds of change require, and whether and how things like “interfaith” and “social justice” sit together or can be made to sit together.
Now, as we work to develop a collaborative project that seeks to address antisemitism and Islamophobia and create resources to support others in doing so, how can we reconcile these very different lenses on the nature of the problem and approaches to it?
Were this a solely research endeavor, I would first try to better understand what identity is and the work it’s doing in this space. I might try to co-theorize identity with my interlocutors (Dattatreyan & Marrero-Guillamón 2019), move close to it as a matter of concern for them (Latour 2004), or think together about the kinds of questions that need to be asked about identity (Costanza-Chock 2020), and bring subsequent insights to bear on existing anthropological accounts of identity.
In relationship
But in a research–practice relationship, where the aim is to support better/best practice and to align interests across researchers and practitioners, how should we proceed? What does research–practice collaboration look like when we can’t seem to come together around a concept that is central to the practitioner’s ways of organizing and acting? How can academic critique be made to meaningfully inform practice and how can practice further academic thought?
I have a sense of how we should not proceed. For instance, I don’t think we as researchers should throw up our hands and employ an uncritical use of identity (or any given concept), or conversely, that we should put such concepts “under erasure” because they appear to us no longer serviceable (Hall 2000). I also don’t think disagreement about a key concept presents a total impasse for collaborative work.
Moving forward
What is less clear is the best way to move forward. But perhaps we might start by examining more closely the genealogies and assumptions that identity brings along and paying attention to how those then shape practices and resources.
What could this look like?
It might look like setting aside dedicated time to focus on identity to tease apart its multiple definitions and usages, the assumptions behind it, how those impact the kinds of programs, actions, actors, and relations that appear possible and desirable, and whether and how those speak to the changes F&BF seeks to achieve. It might look like critically tracing and theorizing identity in order to illuminate key features of the interfaith sphere and the political world it inhabits (Brown 2006). It might look like supporting our soon-to-start jointly-supervised PhD student to explore what identity is doing in interfaith spaces, with an eye towards the individual and/vs. the structural and systemic in interfaith action, as a focused research objective.2
And it will certainly involve ongoing, open exchange between myself and F&BF colleagues as we grapple with this challenge that is at one methodological, epistemological, and shaped by practical parameters. Perhaps it’s precisely our shared commitment to co-learning via forms of encounter and exchange that enable rigorous engagement with each other and the world that enables us to take on such research-practice challenges in the first place.
The practice perspective
As Head of Programmes at F&BF,* Carrie Alderton has guided much of Anastasia’s collaborative time. Here, Carrie reflects on F&BF learning over the same period, and what this invitation to think carefully about identity means for her work.
To understand and celebrate
As captured in Anastasia's reflection, many approaches and methodologies in the interfaith world (and indeed in recommendations for developing RE curricula and pedagogies) start with the exploration of the individual, of “identity”, of the lens our beneficiaries use to understand the world.
In a practical sense we have seen this having many benefits. It helps our beneficiaries to understand, and sometimes celebrate, themselves and their own experience in ways they have not before. It can help them to probe assumptions and generalisations they make about others. It can help them grapple with someone else's lens, also shaped by their lived experiences, religion, worldview or faith.
And in many of our projects it helps people to realise their unique voice which can be used to effect change: whether that be in local cases of faith based hate and division (the Interfaith Justice Project); local social change projects and influencing members of parliament (ParliaMentors); or bringing their voice to bare new perspectives on the environmental movement (the Forum for Faith & Ecology).
The opportunity to question
However, we welcome the opportunity to question our assumptions. Whether that be through internal discussions, through conversations with Anastasia and other academics, or with critical friends.
We ask ourselves whether the terminology of identity really captures what we hope it does. Does it mean the same thing to us as the people we are working with? Whether the focus on the individual is truly inclusive of the communities and people we work with. Is it possible that the focus on individual worldviews itself has a colonial legacy, or is shaped by Western European ontology?
Balancing thought and delivery
Our need to balance this deep thinking and challenging of our assumptions, with the need to deliver and define our work in terms that make sense in our contexts (schools, universities, communities), and communicate our impact clearly, is a challenge. Especially with a team of dialogue practitioners, each deeply informed by our own faith/ belief, who often enjoy sitting in the murkiness of disagreement or complexity. This is one of the many reasons why working with Anastasia closely over the last few months, and spaces like CIP's research practice group, is hugely valuable to us.
We are committed to continue questioning and being open to challenge, especially in the next few months as we redesign our theory of change, and articulate more clearly how our work brings about individual, community and societal transformation.
Further reading
Read Anastasia’s previous research–practice reflection: interfaith under scrutiny
Notes
[1] Inspired by my Cambridge Interfaith Programme colleagues Esra Özyürek and Daniel Weiss, I wonder whether the very terms “antisemitism” and “Islamophobia” also smuggle in a similar emphasis on individual feelings (being “anti” and/or fearful). Relatedly, in 2021 when Parliament last debated whether and how to define Islamophobia, a similar concern was raised by some MPs. They queried whether “phobia” implies a medicalized fear and further whether a term that claims “a fear of” will afford the desired actions, interventions, and protections (Definition of Islamophobia: Volume 700 Debated on Thursday 9 September 2021 (hansard.parliament.uk)).
[2] I’m talking about identity here because this concept has emerged as important in my work with F&BF, but the same could apply to other big, organizing concepts in interfaith spaces.
[*] In May 2025, Carrie was made Interim CEO at F&BF.