1. Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures
  2. School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
  3. Religion & Public Life

Religion & Public Life

The Hidden Peacebuilders: highlighting the role of local faith actors

Professor Emma Tomalin

The Hidden Peacebuilders Network (HPBN) supports the crucial but under-recognised activities of local faith actors (LFAs) in bringing peace to conflict-affected areas of the world.  Established in 2019 the HPBN network includes peace practitioners and LFAs from the UK, USA, Sri Lanka, South Sudan and the Philippines. This project builds on Professor Tomalin’s research on the role of religion in international development over the past two decades, in particular, more recent collaborative work that focuses on the contribution of local faith actors as well as growing localisation/decolonisation debates in the sector. The HPBN project identifies and shares evidence on the role of LFAs in peacebuilding initiatives, paying attention to both visible and invisible dimensions of LFA contributions to peace making. HPBN activities reach three audiences: LFAs themselves; larger peacebuilding and development organisations (faith-based and secular, international and local); and local and national government actors. These groupings includes both those who have directly participated in the network and others within the wider peacebuilding and development sector. For more information, visit the project website here- https://hiddenpeacebuilders.leeds.ac.uk/

Understanding the Role of Faith Based Organisations in Anti-Trafficking

Professor Emma Tomalin

The illegal trafficking of human beings is a world-wide problem of 'modern slavery'. This project addresses a significant gap in our understanding of efforts to prevent trafficking, documenting the growing role of faith based organisations (FBOs) in anti-trafficking efforts in England. FBOs include 'faith-based NGOs' that offer support to marginalised groups, but also other types of religious organisation from 'apex bodies' that represent faith traditions in the UK (e.g. the Church of England, the Sikh Council UK) to individual places of worship. The study provided important new insights into the role of FBOs in three areas: support for trafficked persons; campaigns and public awareness; and government and statutory responses. The project contributed a new anti-proselytization clause to the Human Trafficking Foundation’s Care Standards for trafficked people. 

Narratives in Action: Modelling the Types and Drivers of Sikh Activism in Diaspora

Professor Jasjit Singh

Sikh activism in the UK and beyond is a much debated topic. This project aims re-frame the terms of public debate and understanding – regionally, nationally and internationally – regarding such activism in the UK and beyond. This project provides new historical narratives and analyses leading to three main impacts:

  1. Shaping policy and practice relating to Sikhs at various levels of governance in the UK, including the Home Office, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), counter-extremism agencies, and broadcast regulators, such as the Office for Communications (OFCOM);
  2. Re-framing media debate and understandings of ‘Sikh extremism’ in diaspora, particularly in the UK, India and Canada;
  3. Empowering Sikh communities and organisations by providing prominent open access resources and facilitating open dialogue community events that foster greater community cohesion and education.

Establishing the Facts, Developing Professionalisation and Enabling Transparent ‘Pilgrim-centred’ Communication in the UK Hajj Sector

Professor Sean McLoughlin

In a period of significant restructuring in the global Muslim pilgrimage industry, Professor Seán McLoughlin published the first in-depth report (2019) describing and analysing burgeoning UK Hajj markets and their governance. Collaborating with key pilgrim welfare and trade organisations, McLoughlin’s research has had three significant impacts: ‘Establishing the facts’ about the sector, meeting a core objective of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hajj & Umrah since its formation in 2018. Second, engaging key stakeholders in consultations, which, for UK Hajj organisers, enabled change, created consensus and lent credibility, supporting the industry to professionalise. Third, Empowering c.25,000 British Hajjis annually with transparent, ‘pilgrim-centred’ information going beyond previous advice, including a co-produced visual Hajj Package Explainer.

The Bible, Rape Culture and Abuse: Shiloh project support for Church handling of gender-based violence

Professor Johanna Stiebert

The Shiloh project  led by Professor Stiebert examines both biblical texts depicting gender-based violence (GBV) and representations of such texts (and related concepts including 'virginity', 'purity', 'sinful sexuality') in the context of how GBV is constructed in present-day academic and non-academic discourses. The work of the global Shiloh network with its extensive academic-practitioner collaborations has impacted a range of non-academic stakeholders in a variety of social, geographic and institutional contexts. While initially focused on Aotearoa New Zealand, informal indications are that the toolkit in its original version is being used also by church leaders in some countries in Africa and Asia. The Shiloh Project's extensive range of outputs in various media has opened up multiple spaces and methods. In and through these materials, abusive textual orthodoxies and authorities are challenged; the marginalised victims of these orthodoxies can thus be recognised, centred and offered pastoral support. A Toolkit for Churches was developed within the context of the unfolding sexual abuse scandal in New Zealand, during the life of the Shiloh Grant. The toolkit was trialled for application in churches in New Zealand, especially for congregations that have suffered scandals concerning sexual misconduct and has been incorporated as a mandatory component in the training of Methodist Presbyters in New Zealand, through a trained group of Methodist facilitators. The toolkit is highly adaptable to different cultural contexts and has been contextualised and used very successfully in Kenya and Tanzania and is being adapted for use in the Philippines. The toolkit is freely downloadable as an open-access pdf - https://shilohproject.blog/accompanying-survivors-of-sexual-harm/

Sacred Queer Stories: The Ugandan LGBT Refugees Life Story Project

Professor Adriaan van Klinken

This project led by Prof. Adriaaan van Klinken involved collaborative research with a community-based organisation of LGBTQ refugees, called The Nature Network, and featured as a Co-production Research Toolkit Case Study (https://lssi.leeds.ac.uk/adriaan-van-klinken-co-production-research-toolkit-case-study/) and as an Open Research Case Study (https://sway.office.com/ZgPA0HNnTvo04U4D?ref=Link). 

The project resulted in a co-authored monograph, with two of the local co-producers serving as co-authors: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012838/sacred-queer-stories-ugandan-lgbtq-refugee-lives-and-the-bible/ 

This book has been recognised by external reviewers as "A remarkable example of academic research that centers the decolonization and democratization of a field of knowledge and its creators." (https://readingreligion.org/9781847012838/sacred-queer-stories/) The project also produced two drama films produced by The Nature Network (https://sacredqueerstories.leeds.ac.uk/films/) which received a Platinum Award of the Changing the Story Film Festival in 2020.

Extinction as cultural heritage? Exhibiting human-nature entanglements with extinct and threatened species

Dr Stefan Skrimshire

Between 2018 and 2023 Skrimshire led a series of AHRC-funded research projects that each sought to engage different UK publics with the question of how we ought to understand, and respond to, the so-called ‘mass extinction crisis’ - the idea that human actions have led to the biggest decimation of life on the planet since the dinosaurs were wiped out. Working with a team of scholars, activists, museums, and artists, Skrimshire interrogated how this conceptually overwhelming idea was affecting, and being affected by: religious belief and faith-based activism, the use of museum displays and public exhibitions, art-works and artist interventions. Skrimshire’s public outputs from this project included a book of commissioned artworks, poetry and essays with accompanying microsite facing Extinction: A Corridor8 collaborative publication - https://facingextinction.corridor8.co.uk/); a ‘creative conversations’ tool-kit for faith-based activists; creative workshops for members of the public including refugee and asylum seekers Thinking Through Extinction; an exhibition at Manchester Museum We Are Nature, Manchester Museum 23 June 2021 - 31 August 2021; a commissioned holographic digital artwork that toured UK light night festivals Voicing Silence • Lou Chapelle and a public symposium ‘Extinction in Public’, 15-16 October, 2020

Shaping public understanding of a multi-faith society.

Since with the launch of the Community Religions Project in 1976, and today continuing through the work of the Centre for Religion and Public Life, theology and religious studies at Leeds has undertaken research that has effected improvements in the representation and public understanding of religion in Britain.

Advancing global church conversations on sexuality

This research on Christianity and sexuality has changed both the form and content of church discussions of sexuality, mainly but not exclusively within the global Anglican Communion.