IAHR African Trust Fund Research & Publication Grant Applications for 2012

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The IAHR African Trust Fund herewith young scholars in particular of any ethnic/national origin, working and/or studying in any higher academic or research institution on the African continent (and nearby islands), whose research project needs financial support or whose publication in an African publishing house (scientific journal) requires a subsidy.

Grant Amount: The total grant allocation for 2012 is US$4000. There will be two awards at the level of US$1000 and four awards at the level of US$500.

Eligibility Criteria: Applicants have to be scholars resident in Africa and associated with any higher academic or research institution within this context. We especially encourage applications from members to the IAHR member associations, namely the African Association for the Study of Religion (AASR), the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (ASRSA), the East African Association for the Study of Religion (EAASR) and the Nigerian Association for the Study of Religion (NASR).

Evaluation Mechanism & Criteria: Applications will be evaluated by the Board of Trustees of the IAHR African Trust Fund, and the board will consult specialists in the relevant fields when needed. Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

  1. The originality, quality, importance and impact of the proposed study as it relates to the historical, social and comparative study of religion in the African continent (and nearby islands).
  2. Adherence to the best practices of research methodology and theory employed.
  3. The relevance of the study to the African continent (and nearby islands).

Submission Deadlines: Applications are open till 15th March 2012. Grant-winning applicants will be announced on 30th March 2012. Note that all grants will be awarded to the successful applicants in April 2012.

Conditions of Grants: Applicants who receive the grant should submit a copy of the publication or a research report (of no less than 5 pages) that summarises the project’s findings to the IAHR African Trust Fund. The publication or completed research project should acknowledge the support received in the form of an IAHR African Trust Fund Grant. The IAHR African Trust Fund will be allowed to reproduce or report the summary and parts of the report on the IAHR website, annual reports, and any other document or medium for the purpose of informing its stakeholders on the study findings. In all these publications, the authorship of the research will be clearly attributed to the applicant.

Application Form: Send a brief covering letter addressed to the IAHR African Trust Fund stating that your submission is for consideration for the IAHR African Trust Fund Grant and include the following required materials:

  1. Name of Applicant
  2. Email, Telephone Number and Mailing Address of the Applicant
  3. Name of University, Department, Research Centre or Institute
  4. Name(s) of IAHR African Member Association(s)
  5. Title of Research/Publication Proposal
  6. A research proposal of not more than four single-spaced pages detailing the aims/objectives, specific research questions, methodology and theoretical issues, the rationale and plan of research ( time frame), and a detailed, one-page budget should be attached, indicating the amount being applied for and the exact purposes for which it will be used. If application is for only publication purposes, also indicate to what specific journal or book and evidence of what sum is required for such publication.
  7. Brief curriculum vitae and a statement of qualifications that specifically addresses the research project.
  8. Include two letters of reference from senior scholars, one of whom MUST be a member, preferably an executive member of the IAHR member associations.

Completed applications forms are to be submitted as an electronic copy file in PDF or MS Word format in an attachment via email to the Secretary of the African Trust Fund Board of Trustees, Dr. Afe Adogame [A.Adogame@ed.ac.uk].

Please include in the electronic copy file the applicant’s last name e.g. Elizabeth.pdf / Elizabeth.doc. The subject line in the email should read “IAHR African Trust Fund Application 2012” – Note, no hard copies will be accepted.

For more information on the IAHR African Trust Fund Applications, please contact the Secretary of the African Trust Fund Board of Trustees at A.Adogame@ed.ac.uk

SSSR Call for papers

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Michael Cieslak and Pierre Hegy invite you to present a paper in sessions dedicated to Catholic research. Michael will again sponsor several sessions in the Catholic Research Forum, with special focus on applied research. Pierre would like to organize a session on Catholic decline and renewal.

Michael Cislak: MCieslak@RockfordDiocese.org
Pierre Hegy: Pierre.Hegy@gmail.com

Call for papers – RRA meetings 2012

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The Religious Research Association (RRA) is now accepting session and paper proposals for its 2012 meetings in Phoenix, Arizona. The call for papers can be found at http://rra.hartsem.edu/call2012.pdf. Recall that the deadline for all proposals is March 31. The RRA submission link can be accessed through the following website: http://www.sssrweb.org

As you may recall, we hold our meetings jointly with the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and share a submission portal with them. So, when you click on the link listed above and navigate to the session proposal or paper proposal website, the primary point to remember is to click the ***RRA radial button*** immediately above the title of your session or paper proposal. Clicking this radial button will ensure that your paper is routed to the RRA program chair.

Questions about the meetings can be directed to me at john.bartkowski@utsa.edu
Questions about the formation and organization of the RRA program can be directed to our Program Chair, Joseph Baker, at bakerjo@etsu.edu.

**************************
Dr. John P. Bartkowski
Department of Sociology
University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, TX 78249
john.bartkowski@utsa.edu<mailto:john.bartkowski@utsa.edu>
Office: (210) 458-6007
Cell: (210) 508-2530
Fax: (210) 458-4619

Summer Seminar in Pentecostal Studies

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Trinity Western University is hosting a Summer Seminar in Pentecostal Studies, August 13-17, 2012 with Dr. Allan Anderson, University of Birmingham, UK.
See this link for details.
http://www.twu.ca/extension/program/summer/pentecostal.html

The focus will be on understanding Pentecostalism’s global context.

For more information:
Michael Wilkinson
Sociology Department
Trinity Western University
Langley, BC 604-888-7511 ext. 3832
Michael.Wilkinson@twu.ca

New book about religious pluralism in Spain

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A few days ago a new book about religious pluralism in Spain has been presented.
Its title is “Los otros creyentes” (“The other believers. The non-Catholic religious fact in the province of Zamora”), the result of a sociological research project in a small province of our country. You can see some parts of the book in Google Books, via the link found on our blog: http://losotroscreyentes.blogspot.com/. You can see the cover, the synopsis and index, and some reviews and appearances in the mass media.

Zamora is a small province of Spain with a strong Roman Catholic presence, but there are several religious minorities, some of them since the Middle Ages (Islam), and since the 19th century (some reformed churches). In the book we study the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion), Christian Brethren, Assemblies of God,  Gypsy Evangelical Church, Seventh
Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gnostic Movement and Maitreya.

If you are interested in the book, the authors can send it to you. The promotional price is 13 euros, and you have to add the postage (full prices with postage included: 15,50 for Spain; 19,50 for Europe; 23 for the rest of the world).
losotroscreyentes@gmail.com

Summer School on Religion, Culture and Society

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Call for applications 2012 UCSIA summer school on “Religion, Culture and Society” Sunday 26 August – Sunday 2 September (dates of arrival and departure) Antwerp, Belgium

It is evident that religion, culture and society are strongly interwoven and are crucial for understanding the contemporary world. With globalization touching all aspects of our lives, religion(s) and culture(s) have to understand their position in this complex globalizing process. It is the aim of the interdisciplinary UCSIA summer school to better understand the dynamic interplay between the macro- and micro-social developments concerning religion that take place in much of the contemporary world.
This year the programme will focus on the topic of Secularism(s) and Religion in Society.

Guest lecturers
Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi), Peggy Levitt
(Wellesley College), Robert W. Hefner (Boston University) and John Hutchinson
(London School of Economics).

Practical details:

Participation and stay for young scholars and researchers are free of charge.
Participants should pay for their own travel expenses to Antwerp.
You can submit your application via the electronic
submission<http://www.ucsia.org/main.aspx?c=.SUMMERSCHOOL&n=48426> on the our
website<http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool>: http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool
Deadline for application is Sunday 15 April 2012.

For further information regarding the programme and application procedure, please
have a look at our website.

Contact:

Sara Mels
Project coordinator

UCSIA vzw
Prinsstraat 14
B-2000 Antwerp
Belgium
Tel. +32 (0)3 265 45 99
Fax +32 (0)3 707 09 31
e-mail: sara.mels@ua.ac.be<mailto:sara.mels@ua.ac.be>

Call for Papers: “Religion and Social Inequality"

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The 36th Congress of the German Society for Sociolgy (Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Soziologie – DGS) will be held from October, 1st to 5th
2012 in Bochum and Dortmund.
http://www.dgs2012.de/english

The Section for Sociology of Religion is organizing a panel on during this conference. The call for paper is
only in German, http://www.dgs2012.de/wp-content/uploads/Sektionen/CfP_Sektion_Religionssoziologie.pdf
but papers in English are also very welcome.

In the early sociology of religion the relationship between social class and religion was a central topic. Weber for example analysed social strata as carriers of religious ideas. Following Weber this research question was picked up by Niebuhr in his exploration of the social sources of denominations and by Bourdieu in his analysis of the religious field. In the last decades, the problem of social inequality has been mostly neglected as a research question in the sociology of religion.

Papers presenting empirical findings, quantitative as well as qualitative, from a national or transnational perspective, about the
impact of social class and life conditions on religious beliefs, practices and affiliations are invited. The religions of the upper
classes and the lower classes, of the privileged and the “negatively privileged” are of special interest for this panel.

Please send abstracts of 2500 characters maximum (including spaces) until March 15th to the organizers:
Prof.Dr. Gert Pickel: pickel@rz.uni-leipzig.de
Dr. Kornelia Sammet: sammet@uni-leipzig.de

Call for Applications: Lisbon Summer School 2012: “Secularism, Gender and Democracy”

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Lisbon Summer School 2012: “Secularism, Gender and Democracy”
Time and Place: July 4-July 6, 2012 at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Lisbon, Portugal (CES).

Invited Faculty
Veit Bader(Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India)
Chia Longman (University of Ghent, Belgium)

Website
https://sites.google.com/site/secularismgenderanddemocracy/
(The website will also in the near future cover information on the social programme during the summer school.)

The Lisbon Summer School 2012 has as its topic the contentious relationship between religion and politics, and the impact that this relationship has on gender issues. Religion undoubtedly plays an important role in contemporary societies: multiculturalism, migration and bioethical debates, among others, put religion in the spotlight, thereby calling for a redefinition of classical secularization theories. Today, the separation between religion and politics is being questioned more or less radically, as is the meaning and the substance of democracy. At the same time, European as well as non-European societies are experiencing a profound reshaping of their political landscapes. The Mediterranean area is especially affected by massive transformations – as can be seen in phenomena like the “Arab Spring” or the Spanish “indignados”–movement.

In these contexts, it has become clear that new modes of governance redraw the boundaries between  institutional actors and citizens, and create space for horizontal networks. Gender relations lie at the heart of these transformative processes. In Europe, gender relations have over the last 20 years become the focal point of controversies over the contested separation of religion and politics – the various “Hijab affairs” in many European countries attest to this fact.

This broad theme will be discussed on the three days of the summer school along the following lines:
1. We will look into contemporary configurations of secular regimes from a comparative and historical perspective.
2. We will scrutinize the manifold and complex ways in which gender is affected by, and at the same time itself affects, modes of religious governance in modern societies.
3. We will focus on the democratic challenges and opportunities that religious diversity creates within liberal political regimes.

The topic of this summer school is by definition interdisciplinary. Grasping the complex interface between religion and politics, and how they it impacts on gender and gender relations involves different disciplines, such as Political Science and Sociology, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Anthropology, Religious Studies and Theology. Each of these disciplines can offer original and in-depth insights into the topic of this summer school. Therefore, researchers and practitioners working in these academic fields are invited to apply. Both theoretical papers on the normative and conceptual problems, and empirical papers on case studies, comparative accounts, and historical trajectories are welcome.

In terms of teaching methodology, this summer school is based on the idea that only a productive dialogue between the faculty and the participants can promote the flourishing of democratic scholarship. Therefore, each of the three days of the summer school will consist of a morning session, with interactive presentations by the faculty, and of an afternoon session, featuring the individual presentations of the participants. Participants will hence have the unique opportunity to engage in critical conversations with the faculty, and discuss their own research projects. Faculty members will present original contributions to the topic as well as comment on the participants’ papers.

How to Apply  To participate in the summer school you must have at least completed a BA degree. Interested graduate students and postdoctoral researchers should go to the website and fill in the form there.

Deadline for Applications: April 1, 2012
Fees: 200 EUR
Language: The working language of the summer school is English.

Call for Papers: Public Benefit in the Study of Religion

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Call for Papers: Joint BASR/BSA-SOCREL panel on the ‘Public benefit in the study of religion’ with keynote panel speakers Prof. Eileen Barker and Prof. Douglas Davies. BASR annual conference, September 5-7 2012 University of Winchester.

The topic of the panel is how research has directly benefited ‘the public’. The panel will focus on two aspects of this broad theme as it relates to the study of religion: 1) What do we mean by ‘public benefit’?  How do we demonstrate it, measure it, communicate it and what are the practical and theoretical issues surrounding the idea of how the study of religion – or faith, or belief – can operate in the, or perhaps as a, public good? Are there theoretical problems in considering what is meant by ‘public’ or ‘benefit’ in different cultural and historical contexts? 2) What are some case examples of how research or teaching about religion has contributed to the public good? We are not asking here for examples about how ‘religion’ has contributed to the public but specifically how the study of and research on religion has done so.

Abstracts to Dr Abby Day a.f.day@kent.ac.uk and Dr Bettina Schmidt b.schmidt@tsd.ac.uk by 1 April 2012.