The 2022 Conference of the BASR was hosted by the Open University in Milton Keynes. The theme was Religion and Public Engagement and this issue of the JBASR showcases some of the insights from the conference. The keynote from Jas Singh, “Becoming an accidental activist: Religion, Academia and Community Engagement” provides a useful starting point for considering what we hope to achieve, and what we can achieve, through public engagement.

The BASR Conference 2021 was hosted online by the University of Edinburgh. Welcoming delegates from around the world, the aim of the conference was to discuss disciplinary and interdisciplinary pasts and futures in Religious Studies or the Study of Religion/s, with a particular focus on the future shape of the field in the 21^st Century. You will find the theme reflected in these five papers from the Conference, including the two keynotes from Wanda Alberts and James L. Cox.

Melanie Prideaux, Coordinating Editor

Assitant Editor: Jonathon O'Donnell

We would also like to thank David G. Robertson for website support.

Photo of New College, Edinburgh, by Suzanne Owen

The BASR 2020 annual conference was a one-day conference held online, hosted by the Open University's Department of Religious Studies and focussed on Teaching and Learning in the Study of Religion. There were two panels, one on Teaching and Learning and the other on Religion and Worldviews. These panels were recorded and are available here: https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/religious-studies/?p=1144. We have a selection of those papers in this journal volume as well as a couple of additional ones. The two sections were guest edited by Wendy Dossett and Stefanie Sinclair - see their introductions.

Suzanne Owen, Coordinating Editor

Assitant Editor: Jonathon O'Donnell

We would also like to thank David G. Robertson for website support.

Image: S. Owen 2022

The articles in this volume were first presented at the annual British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) conference held at Leeds Trinity University 2-4 September, 2019. Its theme was “Visualising Cultures: Media, Technology and Religion” and was organised by Dr Suzanne Owen with Dr Ilaria Vecchi, then a PhD student, and Dr Stefano Odorico, Director of the International Research Centre for Interactive Storytelling (IRIS), based at Leeds Trinity. The conference also welcomed papers employing a collaborative or inter-disciplinary methodology in the study of religion more generally.

The BASR was grateful to have Dr James Kapaló as the keynote speaker at this conference who delivered a rich and engaging paper exploring photographic and filmic representations of religious clandestinity produced by or with the help of the secret police in Central and Eastern Europe. We are pleased to be able to include his article based on his keynote paper.

The other articles either engage with visual methods or the visual as data, or focuss on collaborations and interdisciplinarity (or a combination of these). This issue begins with an op-ed from Jonathan Tuckett on his thoughts about the task of Religious Studies, drawing from Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation".  The coordinating editor would like to thank Tuckett for submitting this to the BASR committee as I think it makes some pertinent remarks about the state of RS in the UK and what this means for early career academics.

Coordinating editor: Dr Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University

Assistent editor: Dr Jonathon O'Donnell, University College Dublin

Cover image: just prior to the start of the conference, I walked on Ilkley Moor nearby with another participant and took this photo of the Cow and Calf rocks.

The articles in this special joint issue of Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions and the Journal Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions were presented as papers at the joint BASR/JISASR conference Borders and Boundaries: ‘Religion’ on the Periphery held at Queen’s University Belfast from 3-5 September 2018.

This edition opens with the two keynote lectures from the conference given by Naomi Goldenberg and Gladys Ganiel, which are listed as jointly published by both journals.

Coordinating Editor of JBASR – Dr Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University
General Editor of JISASR – Dr James Kapaló, University College Cork  

Table of Contents

KEYNOTE LECTURES

'Religion' and its Limits – Reflections on Discursive Borders and Boundaries [pp 1-15]
Naomi GOLDENBERG

Power from the Periphery? ‘Extra-Institutional Religion’ and the Prospects for Change – Insights from the Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds [pp 16-34]
Gladys GANIEL 

ARTICLES IN JBASR

The Border, the Laggan and the Professor
Malcolm MACOURT

The Marginality of ‘Irish Mormonism”: Confronting Irish Boundaries of Belonging
Hazel O’BRIEN

Itako on the screen: using visual ethnography for understanding how these Japanese shamans are adapting to social change
Ilaria VECCHI

Post-lineage yoga: adventures in social media engagement
Theodora WILDCROFT

Marginalized centre: Wana people and the geography of power
Giorgio SCALICI

ARTICLES IN JISASR [click to view]

Before and after Science: Esoteric Traces in the Formation of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Subject [PDF]
John BOYLE

The Congregation as a Station for Social Integration: An Analysis of Congregants’ Personal Networks with an Interpretation Using Giddens’ Theory of Structuration [PDF], pp. 60-83
Adrian STRINGER

The Tradition of Segnature: Underground Indigenous Practices in Italy [PDF]
Angela PUCA

The articles in this edition of JBASR were presented as papers at the BASR annual conference 4-6 September 2017 at the University of Chester. The BASR are proud to be able to publish in this edition a number of articles by PhD and early career scholars. 

"Narrative" has emerged as valuable category of analysis in the study of religions. This conference took narrative as its theme with a view to testing its efficacy and resilience for elucidating constructions of religion.

In the first article, Moojan Momen investigates the millennialist narrative of the Babi Movement in Iran, and in the second article Paul Fuller describes the ethnocentric Buddhist narratives of Myanmar. Daniela Bevilacqua explores the narratives of place-making at the site of Garh Dham in West Bengal and the story of the Yogi who resides there, while Jennifer Uzzell discusses the hold that Neolithic barrows have in the imagination connected to ancestry and landscape and the construction of new barrows in the UK. The next pair of articles employ discourse analysis to specific groups of practitioners: Angela Puca analyses Post-truth narratives and Scientism among practitioners of Contemporary Shamanism in Italy, and Alison Robertson considers narratives of meaning-making in kink as religioning, while recognising the porocity of such concepts of both kink and religion. The final two articles explore religion in the public sphere in two different national contexts: Liam Sutherland analyses how Interfaith Scotland employs the 'world religions' approach to construct representations of religious minorities, and Kit Kirkland focusses on the 'priestly rhetoric' of Trump and his appeal to evangelicals during the US election in 2016.

All these articles provide rich case studies for exploring narratives of religion in the construction of identity and authenticity and ascribing meaning to places, memories and stories.

In addition, there are three book reviews

Suzanne Owen, JBASR Coordinating Editor

Book review editor: David G. Robertson

The image (by Suzanne Owen) shows the Eastgate Clock in Chester.

 

This collection of essays in honour of Professor Ursula King is a testament to the career of a truly inspirational and ground-breaking academic in the study of religions.

Guest editors: Dominic Corrywright and Bettina E. Schmidt

Coordinating editor: Suzanne Owen

Contributions from Peggy Morgan, Kim Knott, Sian Melvill Hawthorne, Morny Joy, Rosalind I.J. Hackett, Tina Beattie and Brian Bocking.

Photo of Ursula King by Suzanne Owen

Welcome to the new edition of JBASR (formerly DISKUS) on its new website.

These papers were originally presented at the annual 2015 conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions at the University of Kent, 7-9 September, on the theme of Religion in the Local and Global: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Challenges. It was also an occasion to celebrate 50 years of the study of religion at Kent.

The three articles included in this edition of JBASR have strong theoretical concerns, with Richard Amesbury looking at debates over circumcision in Germany, Claire Wanless theorising individualised religion, and Richard Saville-Smith applying the psychiatric idea of disruption to religious experience.

For the first time, we are also including book reviews, edited by David Robertson of The Open University. This edition contains reviews of individual volumes in the Norton Anthology of World Religions.

Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity University, Coordinating Editor of JBASR

Photo of the Pantheon oculus in Rome by Suzanne Owen