In the final episode of the season, James and Will are joined by Dr Adam R. Shapiro, an historian of science, whose work focuses on public understandings and misunderstandings of science and the relationship between science and religion. Adam provides an overview of some of the emerging trends in the history of science and religion and situates his own work within this wider disciplinary movement. The discussion ranges from the development of and public controversies surrounding two space...

In the penultimate episode of the season, Will and Rebecca are joined by Dr Carissa Sharp, Assistant Professor in Psychology of Religion in the School of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK and Dr Carola Leicht, Reader in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Kent, UK. Carissa and Carola discuss their almost decade-long collaboration, using social psychological methods to explore questions of science-religion conflict and how religious and nonreligious social...

In this episode Will is joined by a new co-host Dr Rebecca Hughes, a social psychologist at the University of Birmingham. Will and Rebecca welcome Renate Ysseldyk, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada specializing in Social and Health Psychology, and Emily Tippins, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa, who recently completed her Masters of Science working with Renate at Carleton University. Renate and Emily discuss how...

In this timely episode James and Will welcome Amy Adamczyk, Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Amy discusses her sociological exploration of attitudes towards abortion, in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), and the role that religious and other socio-demographic factors play in shaping these attitudes. Amy presents the results of a comparative quantitative analysis of...

In this episode James and Will welcome Professor Reynaldo Rivera, Full Professor in the School of Communication and Design, post-doctoral researcher Dr Arturo Fitz Herbert and researcher Sol Barbera from Austral University (Argentina). Reynaldo, Arturo and Sol discuss there work as project partners on the Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum of Global Perspectives project, which sees teams of researchers in 8 countries investigate the relationship between science and religion using...

In this episode James and Will welcome Dr Thokozani Kamwendo, post-doctoral researcher at Durham University, and Dr Caroline McCalman, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, for a roundtable discussion on the relationship between scholarship in Science & Belief and Science & Technology Studies (STS). Thoko is the editor of a collection exploring this relationship, with Caroline providing a single-authored and a co-authored contribution. As well as hosting the...

In this episode we welcome Dr Neil Stephens, Associate Professor in Technology and Society at the University of Birmingham. Neil discusses his 15+ year study of ‘cultured meat’; the processes of its scientific and technological development, how religious authorities have been involved in these processes, and the broader epistemological, ontological and sociological implications of his research. We go on to discuss the March for Science, the value of borrowing concepts from different...

In this episode (our first recorded in-person) we talk with distinguished historian of science Professor Bernard Lightman. We discuss his wide-ranging contributions to the historical study of science and religion, from his early work on the origins of agnosticism, to his views on more recent shifts and trends in the field - and the differences between T.H. Huxley and Richard Dawkins. 

The Science & Belief in Society Podcast is back - but for how much longer? In this opening episode of Season 3, James and Will welcome Dr Hauke Riesch, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University, London, to talk about the end of the world... Narratives of the apocalypse - stories of how the world will end, and humanity's fate before, during and after these variously prophesied cataclysms, have been a central feature of many global religions.  From the threat of nuclear war via...

Religious practices and their effects are increasingly the subject of scientific investigation. In the field of Contemplative Science, mediative practices drawn from Buddhist traditions are united with techniques of analysis from cognitive and neurosciences. In this episode, James and Will welcome Mareike Smolka, a PhD Researcher at Maastricht University in Science and Technology Studies and Fullbright Scholar at Arizona State University, who has ethnographically explored this community....

In this episode, Richard and Will talk with Professor Adam Chepkwony, a Full Professor of Religion at the University of Kabianga in Kenya. Professor Chepkwony's work covers a wide range of topics including African Religion, Inter-religious Dialogue, Science and Religion, and more. In this episode, Professor Chepkwony provides his perspective on how issues like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have affected, and are perceived by, people in Kenya. Additionally, Professor Chepkwony...

In this episode, Rachael and Richard talk with Dr Sarah Qidwai, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Sarah’s work explores transnational and local perspectives on scientific disciplines during the long nineteenth century. In this episode, we discuss the focus of Sarah’s doctoral thesis, the Muslim polymath Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), and her latest project entitled ‘Scientism and Empire’ while examining how disciplines such as astronomy, geology, and...

Understanding public attitudes towards science has become an increasingly important area of research in recent decades, and the importance of this kind of work has only been heightened by the emergence of COVID-19, and the diverse and unpredictable public responses to scientific and medical advice during the pandemic. In this episode Will and Richard talk to Dr Baastian Rutjens, who investigates public attitudes to science around the world, with a focus on what he describes as ‘science...

In this episode James Riley and Richard Grove talk with John Stenhouse, Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago, New Zealand.  John's research interests centre on the interconnections between science, religion, race, politics and gender in the modern world, particularly using New Zealand as the major site of study. We talk about the history of creationist and evolutionary ideas in New Zealand, and how a nation cannot be separated from larger complexities of empire and...

In this episode, hosts Richard Grove and James Riley meet with Dr. Vivian Dzokoto, a Cultural Psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States, to discuss her work on the cultural differences in how people think about "the mind." Dr. Dzokoto has published research on a wide range of topics. However, one of the key characteristics of her research is the examination of culture and religion. Much of her research focuses on people from West African countries, such as Ghana....

In this episode, hosts Rachael Shillitoe and Richard Grove, meet with Elaine Howard Ecklund, Professor of Sociology at Rice University and David R. Johnson, Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University, to discuss their new book, Varieties of Atheism in Science, out now with Oxford University Press. Elaine and David reflect on the findings of their study which draws on surveys and interviews with atheist scientists in the UK and USA. Chatting with Rachael and...

New-age spirituality, wellness and alternative health practices have been cast in a new light as the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded. The relationship between these practices and established or mainstream science and public health has tended to be an uneasy one, and this unease has only increased during the pandemic, with online spiritualist and wellness communities providing fertile ground for the growth and spread of increasingly anti-establishment and conspiratorial ideas. To discuss these...

The Media of Mediumship project is running jointly at the University of Stirling and the Science Museum Group. The project team comprises Principal Investigator Professor Christine Ferguson, Co-Investigator Dr Efram Sera-Shriar and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Emma Merkling. In this very spooky episode, Christine, Efram and Emma tell us how from the late-19th Century on, novel technologies of the period - including photographic cameras, radio transmitters and devices for producing and...

A sneak peak of what's coming up in Season Two of The Science & Belief in Society Podcast

In the final episode of Season 1 of the Science & Belief in Society Podcast, we’re re-joined by Dr Tom Aechtner, Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science in the School Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. Tom talks us through the persuasive and rhetorical tactics used by both pro- and anti-evolutionist media and explains what science communicators can learn from their anti-evolutionary counterparts. Alongside his work on science and religion in mass media,...

In this episode, we talk with Dr Lois Lee about the relationship between science and non-religion and the perceived affinity between the two. Through her ground-breaking research on non-religion and unbelief, Lois discusses the role that science plays in lives of the non-religious and how this role varies across different non-religious groups. Drawing on empirical research and disaggregating what it means to be non-religious, Lois reveals the myriad ways science is and is not intertwined...

In this episode James and Will welcome Dr James Ungureanu, Historian in Residence in the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Queensland. Dr Ungureanu discusses his recent book Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict in which he reinterprets the origins, development, and popularization of the “conflict...

In this episode we talk with Dr Bankole Falade about his recent social psychological and media research on science and religion in South Africa and Nigeria. Bankole introduces the concepts of polyphasia and cognitive dissonance, explains how they are helpful in understanding how and why individuals are able to reconcile apparently contradictory beliefs, and why these concepts are useful for researchers interested in understanding science and belief in diverse social contexts. Bankole also...

In this episode, we welcome Dr Alexander Hall, who discusses his research into the popular media representation of science and religion in the 20thcentury. He introduces us to ways of presenting science which became common on television and radio over the second half of the 20th century, which he calls the ‘evolutionary epic’ and the ‘humanist blockbuster’: grand, sweeping stories about nature and evolution, that takes us from the earliest moments of creation to now, and which in many ways...