Religion, Justice, and Social Action
BSA Sociology of Religion Annual Conference
8-10 July 2024
University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK
Keynote Speakers
- Professor Nandini Deo will be joining us from Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. Professor Deo is an Associate Professor of Political Science, exploring South Asian politics, civil society, gender, and religion/secularism, including the relationship between gender, religion, and activism in India. She is currently undertaking a year at the SNDT Women's University in Mumbai as a Fulbright Scholar.
- Professor Peter Hopkins will be making the shorter commute from Newcastle University to speak with us. He is a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow and Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle, and explores issues around social inequality and justice, in particular Islamophobia, refugee experiences, and intersectionality and oppression.
- Dr Ruth Sheldon is based at King's College London. Her research draws on multi-disciplinary approaches and conversations to explore encounters across difference within public life when religious and secular actors come into contact in contemporary society. Most recently she has undertaken a long-term ethnographic study of everyday relationships between neighbours within a ‘super-diverse’ urban neighbourhood in London, and prior to this she explored campus politics of Palestine-Israel within British universities.
About the Event
After the success of our 2023 conference in Bristol, we are delighted to announce the 2024 SocRel Annual Conference. We will gather at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle and we look forward to once again reconnecting with old friends and welcoming new ones. The theme for 2024 is Religion, Justice, and Social Action.
Religion is embedded in forms of justice and social action. Driven by teachings, philosophical ideals, or socialized norms, religion can galvanize change, limit social and political freedoms, and serve the suffering. Religion, when intertwined with justice and social action, can be observed in the organization of events and activities, the participation in protests, marches and sit-ins, the sharing of information among local and global communities, and in the bringing of individuals and groups together to provide food, shelter, care, connection, and subsistence. Yet religious movements can also act as a barrier to social and ethical progress, hindering justice, obstructing action, and delegitimising dissent, discouraging followers – and seeking to actively stop others – from enabling change. Religion can operate a mechanism for transformation and a means of bolstering the status quo, with some movements jostling for influence at the heart of institutions while others seek to build new social structures set apart from the world according to their own frames of justice. As society has experienced and witnessed the pandemic, the cost-of-living and climate crises, and government decisions on war and violence, how have religion, justice and social action converged to bring about change and alternate responses? The conference will explore these dynamics, and religions’ role in creating and hindering opportunities for response and action as well as the critiques they conjure.
Registration
Registration is open.
- BSA Member Full Conference: £255
- Study Group Only Member Full Conference: £275
- Non-member Full Conference: £310
- BSA Member Day Rate: £110
- Study Group Only Member Day Rate: £135
- BSA Non-member Day Rate: £190
- Day 1 Dinner: £12.95
- Day 2 Dinner: £12.95
Bursaries
Bursary applications have closed.
Accommodation
We've negotiated special accommodation rates, find out more>
Sponsorship
If you wish to discuss sponsorship options, please contact Kirsten Boucher.
SocRel Committee
Professor Mathew Guest (Chair); Dr Dawn Llewellyn and Dr Sonya Sharma (Co-Convenors), Dr Rob Barward-Symmons (Events Officer), Dr Isabella Kasselstrand (Communications Officer), Dr Saleema Burney (Membership Officer), Dr Renasha Khan, Dr Ruth Sheldon, and Dr Lois Lee (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officers), Lucy Potter (Postgraduate and Early Career Scholar Liaison Officer).