The Implicit Religion conferences have enabled scholars to discuss how we associate terms like ‘religion’, ‘secular’, ‘sacred’ and ‘profane" with how humans behave through three axioms:Commitment, Integrating Foci, and Intensive Concerns with Extensive Effects
Meant for work in development, the Implicit Religion conferences emphasize the ‘conferring’ aspect rather than on delivery of polished academic prose or theory. Each conference has a particular theme or focus highlighted on the call for papers that scholars and students from a range of disciplines coalesce around and engage with. At the conference, the Edward Bailey Lecture is the keynote lecture that engages with both the theme of the conference and the work of Edward Bailey. In addition to standard panels, there is a dedicated panel for undergraduate and master’s students to present named “the Scratch Session’. Unlike the other academic panels the audience do not ask the students questions, instead, they must offer guidance and suggestions that the student asks for to improve or develop their work in relation to Implicit Religion. Finally, there is a flash session in which any person attending can speak for one minute about a project or an idea they have and everyone else can offer suggestions to help them, whether that be a particular reading or scholar to look at, another conference to attend, additional resources to focus on or questions to consider asking. This scaffolding is enabling flash ideas to become scratch sessions, and then into full presentations and publications.
The conference is run on the basis of continuing Edward’s ethos of openness and support for emerging scholars and building support for marginalised scholars. With that in mind, we live stream the conference, we welcome parents bringing children and ensure that all accessibility needs are met. Furthermore, younger or marginalised students and scholars are mentored and assisted to create a peer reviewed publication from their presentation.
The Implicit Religion UK conference began in 1978 running annually in Winterbourne, then Denton Hall, and now located at Bishop Grosseteste University. From the beginning, Edward was determined to focus on the conferring aspect, the conversation and discussion rather than the presentation itself and we have remained true to that in subsequent years. As well as being a distinctive marker for an academic conference, that approach has enabled a wide range of international delegates to experience and enjoy a sustained focus of interest, a variety of topics and a diversity of responses to their ideas.
Following the passing of Edward, three significant changes were made: the introduction of a theme for the call for papers, the creation of an Edward Bailey lecture as a keynote, and the inclusion of a dedicated panel for undergraduate and master’s level students to present on.
The previous six years conferences themes and keynotes were:
2022 - Time, Order, and Chaos
The keynote was delivered by Dr. Sunny Dhillon, "The Utopian Free Jazz of John Coltrane"
2021 - Religion, Race and Representation
The keynote was delivered by Dr Ipsita Chatterjea (SORAAAD) on “Designing for Humans, Designing Research on Human Subjects: Race, Representations, and Rights”
2020 - The conference was cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic.
2019 – Religion and the Encounter
The keynote was delivered by Dr Tim Jenkins (Cambridge University) on Encounters with Aliens: research into images of life elsewhere.
2018 – Troubling the norms through embodied / disembodied choices
The keynote was delivered by Dr Dawn Llewelyn (University of Chester) on Elective Childlessness, Motherhood and Christianity: Narration of Choice.
2017 – Materiality and Immateriality
The keynote was delivered by Professor S. Brent Plate (Hamilton College) on Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World: On Myths and Rituals Before the Screen.
2016 – Implicit Religion: Revisiting and Rethinking the Familiar
The keynote was delivered by Professor Grace Davie (University of Exeter) on The Future of Implicit Religion.
Ilaria Biano “The implicit religion of traumatic heritages. Black Lives Matter and the social transmission of cultural trauma through media representations''
Reza Gholami “Critical Race Theory and Islamophobia: Challenging Inequity in Higher Education”
Paul-Francois Tremlett“Representing Religions: Race, Rationality, Colonialism and Anthropology”
Ipsita Chatterjea “Designing for Humans, Designing Research on Human Subjects: Race, Representations, and Rights”
Inero Ancho “Revisiting the Life and Works of Jose Rizal: Philippine Education and Religion in theLast 150 Years”
Joseph Webster “Religion and Hate in Scottish Football: Some Ethnographic Observations”
A. Sophie Lauwers “Asking the ‘Christian question’ in Europe’s political secularism”
Matthew Kirk “Boycott Divestment Sanctions in the Media: Palestine, Politics & Public Knowledge”
Greg Smith “The Silence of those who worship the Lamb: Reflections on British Evangelicals' approach to race since 1980”
S. Jonathan O’Donnell “Racialisation and Rebellion in Conservative Evangelical Reactions to Black Lives Matter”
Ananda Majumder “The Racism in Medieval Christianity & Modern Racial Concept”
Mariska Jung “Racialization of religion through animal ethics”
Yorgas Paschos “New Social Movements and State Repression”
Christian Lomsdalen “The right to be exempted as religiously based otherness”
Phoebe Miller “Markdown Elegies: Technologies of the Identitarian Self in the Ambivalent Internet”
Boheng Zhang “Too much yet not enough: A Comparative Understanding of Francization and Sinicization of Islam”
Israel Selvengyam “Cursing: the last Weapon of the Victims”
Ellie Higgs “Global Identity and “National Costume”: Christianity and the Management of Diversityat the World YWCA Council 2019”
Jessica Albrecht “Race at the centre of feminism’s and religion’s origins”
Tadeáš Vala “Arab-Andalusian Berberophobia in the Convivencia theory”
Ting Guo ““So Many Mothers, So Little Love”: Confucian Hegemony, Post-Colonialism, andParental Governance in Hong Kong Protests”
The Edward Bailey Lecture: Tim Jenkins
“Encounters with Aliens: research into images of life elsewhere.”
Paul Tremlett, “Sovereignties & Disruptions: Religion and Social Change”
Jonathan Tuckett, “Religion: Phenomenologically normal, abnormal or alien?”
Stig Graham, “Introduction to Spiritual Pain”
Valerie Hobbs, “Religious Language at the time of Human Death”
Leslie Francis, “Human Rights as Implicit Religion”
Christopher A. Lewis, “The Road Less Travelled: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Journal Implicit Religion” (1998 To 2015)
Carrie Gooding, “Looking for God in the Fiction and Exegesis of Philip K. Dick”
Viv Gonzalez “Religion and Implicit Religion in The Smurfs” Sally Heavens Implicit Religion and the Psychology of Mission
Adam Foxton Implicit Religion and the cosmic war of football
Lauren Jarvill ‘Toleration’ within education policy and practice
Christopher White Implicit Religion, Brexit and Northern Ireland
Lexi Turner, “I have Found Another Form of Prayer: tensions and resolutions between univocity and apophasis in First Reformed.”
Matylda Amat- Obryk, “Three Approaches to the Body: Affirmation, Rejection and Accommodation”
Mike Dines & Madu Brah, “Waging War with the Material World: In the pursuit of the transcendental with Argentine Krishnacore.”
Francis Stewart, “Crip Punk and the ‘Freak’ Status: Encountering different bodies in the meaning making of Straight Edge punk.”
The Edward Bailey Lecture: Dawn Llewellyn, “Motherhood, elective childlessness and Christianity: Narratives of Choice.”
Leslie Francis – Science as implicit religion and the promotion of religious antagonism: A study among Christian and non-religious 13- to 15-year old-students.
Chris Sunderland -Prophetic consciousness – implicit religion in the environmental movement.
Chris Klassen - The Monstrous Man or the Nature God: The Saga of the Swamp Thing and the Sacred.
Richard Roberts - Theological revisionism and the recomposition of the religio-spiritual field.
Sara Rahmani – Tacit Conversions in Vispanna Meditation.
Israel Selvanayagam – Meaning and Meanings in Religious Life: Gleanings from Experiences and Studies.
Donna Bowman - Female Anatomy and the Sacred in the Anti-Trump Resistance.
Anna Fisk - Patterns of the Breath: Knitting, Spirituality, and Mindfulness.
Brian Nail - Noted Souls: African American Spirituals as Political Theological Resistance
Robyn Stewart - The representation of menstruation within post-Enlightenment ‘scientific discourse’, in relation to the construction of "gender".
Eleanor Higgs - Implicit religion and ordinary ethics: Considerations from field research in Kenya.
Olga Mikkelson – Religion, Popular Music and the body.
Mike Dines - Seeking the Truth: Lyrical Utterances and the Relocating of Krishna in Punk Writing
Francis Stewart – You can’t play that in here: punk music and the norms of space
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