Free one-day symposium on ‘How do religion and belief inform how we do politics, policy and practice?’
The last twenty years has seen a vast array of research invested in understanding and measuring the resources provided by religion and belief in the public sphere: people, networks, buildings. The implication is that a secular society wants to use religion and belief to its advantage, without addressing the underlying values and practices by which it operates. Instead, this symposium proposes to explore the values and practices at the heart of our society, and how they inform politics, policy and practice. We are especially interested to explore how particular cultures of religion and belief can provide alternative value formations that challenge the status quo.

As with all FaithXChange outputs and events, as well as encouraging papers from theology, sociology and anthropology, we are particularly interested in contributions that highlight new frontiers, including but not limited to:


• Psychology
• Cultural studies
• Media and communication
• Literature
• History
• Law
• Art and design
• Music
• Film, theatre and performance
• Politics
• Public Policy
• Education
• Social work


Post-graduate students and early career scholars are highly encouraged to submit their abstract.

Contributions may include either papers or installations and performances. Papers should be limited to fifteen minutes excluding Q&A. Installations and performances may be in presentation form, in which case they too are limited to fifteen minutes. Installations may also be displayed throughout the symposium.
Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be sent to Clare Canning at faithxchange@gold.ac.uk by October 15th, 2014. The symposium will tentatively result into an edited volume.

Informal enquiries on the symposium should be addressed to Clare Canning at faithexchange@gold.ac.uk

For more information on the faithXchange network, please contact either Timothy Stacey [t.stacey@gold.ac.uk] or Panagiotis Pentaris [p.pentaris@gold.ac.uk]