The Cambridge Interfaith Programme has launched a podcast on Religion and Global Challenges. The podcast explores the many ways in which religious narratives and ideas, practices and experiences inform some of the most crucial challenges facing our world today.
You can look forward to monthly sessions where we will invite guest speakers to discuss topics ranging from religion and climate change to how people navigate religious difference in their everyday lives.
You can susbcribe to the podcast on all the major platforms or check out the latest updates on this website. For more information follow us on Twitter (@CamInterfaith) or send us an email at cippodcast@divinity.cam.ac.uk.
Trailer
Politics of Martyrdom
Dr Marlene Schäfers hosts the first mini-series of three episodes looking at the politics of martyrdom in contemporary Russia, Cyprus, Pakistan and India. Dr Schäfers is a social anthropologist and holder of a Newton International Fellowship awarded by the British Academy.
1. New Martyrs, Nationalism, and Moral Conservatism in Contemporary Russia and Cyprus: A Podcast with Dr Victoria Fomina
The first in a series of episodes on the politics of martyrdom in which we consider how religious and spiritual ideas about self-sacrifice animate contemporary social movements, political ideas, and moral imaginaries. In this episode, social anthropologist Dr Victoria Fomina (University of Toronto) discusses the rise of new martyr cults in the Christian Orthodox world, and how these articulate with a rise of nationalist politics, an admiration of militarist values, and the appeal of moral conservatism.
2. Martyrdom, Sacrifice, and Affect in Pakistan: A Podcast with Dr Maria Rashid
The second episode of our series on the politics of martyrdom hosts Dr Maria Rashid, author of Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford UP, 2020). Together we discuss the role that affects and emotions play in making martyrdom a key theme for Pakistani militarism, the way in which gender impacts ideas about sacrifice, and how religion and nationalism intersect in the construction of martyrdom.