Research project
God, Language and Diversity: Spiritual Flourishing in Neurodiverse and Multilingual Communities
- Start date: 1 March 2024
- End date: 30 November 2026
- Funder: John Templeton Foundation
- Primary investigator: Dr Joanna Leidenhag
- Co-investigators: Dr Hannah Nash (School of Psychology)
- External co-investigators: Dr James Eglinton, Dr Daniel Mirman, Dr Thomas Bak, Dr John Perry, Dr Leon van Ommen, Dr Katy Unwin, Prof Napoleon Katsos, Dr Daniel Weiss
Value
£1,541,749
Partners and collaborators
University of Edinburgh, University of St Andrews, University of Aberdeen, University of Cambridge, LaTrobe University (Australia).
Description
The use of language pervades every aspect of life within the Judeo-Christian faith traditions. The importance of language inreligion and ethics is well known, but the remarkable diversity of languages and types of speakers within religious communities has been overlooked. Such neglect undermines current understanding because linguistic diversity is at the heart of many religious practices (e.g., using multiple languages in worship, training participants to interpret texts in unusual ways, and violating norms of communication to speak with a transcendent God). Implicit with such practices is the intriguing idea that linguistic diversity increases our ability to speak faithfully to and about God and that a linguistically diverse community is more likely to be a spiritually flourishing community.
This project investigates the relationship between linguistic diversity, religious language, and human flourishing by bringing together ten theologians, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to run five distinct, but coordinated, research projects. The project reaches across religious divides by including two Jewish, five Christian, and three agnostic researchers.
Together we will answer two big questions:
1) How does linguistic and cognitive diversity affect humanity’s ability to conceptualise and represent God in the Judaeo-Christian tradition?
(2) How do minority speakers thrive in religious communities, and what does this reveal about the relationship between language and human flourishing? The new methods and discoveries made will result in academic and popular-level publications, presentations at conferences and major science festivals, videos and a podcast series.
These outputs will inspire equal interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists and theologians and increase the flourishing of minority language users within religious communities. This project will make it impossible for credible research into religious language to again overlook the role that linguistic diversity places in the life of faith.
Meet the Team
Dr Joanna Leidenhag
Dr Joanna Leidenhag is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Leeds. She is the Principal Investigator for the overall ‘God, Language and Diversity’ project, and she is also collaborating with Dr Hannah Nash on the "Neurodiverse Interpretations of Metaphor in the Bible" (NIMBLE) research project. Dr Leidenhag is currently writing a book looking at how autistic traits positively contribute to the practices of Christian faith.
Dr Niki Drossinos Sancho
Niki is a cognitive neuroscientist with a background in psycholinguistics and neuroimaging. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester, where she investigated the potential for neuropsychological change/recovery in people with chronic aphasia. She then moved on to a mixed-methods intervention trying to reduce the rates of smoking in the UK. Niki has joined Dr Dan Mirman’s lab at the University of Edinburgh, where she will research the communicative strategies used by people with aphasia.
Dr Hannah Nash
Dr Hannah Nash is an Associate Professor in Developmental Psychology at the University of Leeds. She is fascinated by the way people learn spoken language and become literate and why some individuals have more difficulty than others. This has led her to research the language and reading skills of a diverse range of people, mainly children, including those who are dyslexic, have developmental language disorder or who are autistic. Hannah’s role on the GLaD project is as a co-investigator on the NIMBLE (Neurodiverse Interpretations of Metaphor in the Bible) sub-project, where she contributes her expertise in language processing and knowledge of autism and dyslexia.
Dr Léon van Ommen
Dr Léon van Ommen is Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen and Co-Director of the Centre for Autism and Theology. His research focuses on liturgy/worship and autism. Apart from the GLAD project, Léon research currently focuses the sensory aspects of worship and liturgy in relation to autism. He also studies autism and spirituality, with a focus on non- or minimally-speaking autistic people and Black autistic people in the United Kingdom. Léon is author of numerous publications, including Autism and Worship: A Liturgical Theology (Baylor University Press, 2023).
Dr John Perry
John Perry is Senior Lecturer in Theological Ethics at the University of St Andrews. He writes and teaches on theological ethics (evangelical, Anglican, Catholic moral theology), philosophical ethics (Locke, Hume, Mill, Singer), and three applied ethical areas (medical, sexual, political). He also has an interest in the intersection of science and religion, which resulted in a project from Cambridge University Press. In 2017, he had a serious stroke resulting from a car accident, which sparked his interest in language disorders like aphasia.
Hannah Roberts-Clark
Hannah Roberts-Clark is a research assistant at the University of Leeds, having recently graduated with an MSc in Affective Disorders from King’s College London. Her previous research topics have included autistic wellbeing and identity in the media, mental health and social isolation in older adults, and most recently, psychotherapy in individuals with multiple sclerosis and major depressive disorder. Hannah is interested in taking an intersectional lens within all her work, and is aiming towards a career in clinical psychology, focusing on psychotherapy adaptations for vulnerable populations.
Dr Katy Unwin
Dr Katy Unwin is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Counselling, and Therapy at La Trobe University, Australia. She is trained in Psychology, completing an Undergraduate degree in Psychology (BSc Hons), a Masters degree in Cognitive Neuroscience (MSc), and a Doctorate in Psychology (PhD). Following this, she was awarded the prestigious ‘Future Leaders Fellowship’ by the Waterloo Foundation, before taking up a research fellowship at the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre (OTARC). She began the Lectureship at La Trobe in early 2023, continuing to work closely with OTARC. Her research is focussed on understanding sensory differences in autism to support autistic flourishing, as well as listening to the broadly 'unheard' voice of limited/minimally verbal autistic people. She employs a variety of methods in her work including basic visual perception paradigms, physiological measurement, micro-behavioural coding, and qualitative methods.
