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Digital public defence: Gladys Ekone Wang
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September 11, Gladys Ekone Wang will defend her doctoral dissertation: "Childlessness in Marriage among the Bakossi Community in Cameroon: An African Feminist Contextual Pastoral Theology of Procreation"
The Public defend will be held as a video conference over Zoom.
https://www.tf.uio.no/english/research/news-and-events/events/disputations/2020/wang.html
Online PhD- defence: Congratulations to Martha Shaw! Religion and worldview literacy in English schools.
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RVS PhD- student Martha Shaw defended her thesis Teaching and Learning about Religion and Worldviews in English Schools: Religion and Worldview Literacy 23 March, 2020.
This was the first online defence at VID. See more about the defence here (in Norwegian)
For more information, including a link to her thesis, see the VID webpage: https://www.vid.no/arrangementer/disputas-for-martha-shaw/
Religious education and media in Sweden. We congratulate Maximilian Broberg!
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RVS-member Maximilian Broberg defended his thesis december 2019 at Uppsala University.
The full title of his PhD is ‘Stay Awhile and Listen’: Understanding the Dynamics of Mediatization, Authority, and Literacy in Swedish Religious Education"
Abstract: The aim of this article-based dissertation is to explore the role media play in Swedish Religious Education (RE). The purpose is to study Swedish RE teachers’ practices and how these can be related to various dynamics of mediatization, authority, and literacy. Conducted within the Teaching Religion in Late Modern Sweden project at Uppsala University, this study draws on a national survey, as well as semi-structured interviews and classroom observations with 22 RE teachers. Four specific research questions are posed, each addressed separately in four articles. (1) What kinds of media materials do Swedish RE teachers use in their teaching? (2) What kinds of media dynamics are present in RE classrooms where media materials are used? (3) How can RE teachers’ and students’ engagements with mediated religion be analysed from a multiple media literacies perspective? And, (4) how do RE teachers construct authority on religion in a mediatized situation? The first question is approached through a quantitative analysis of survey material, while the three remaining questions were analysed by the use of qualitative thematic analysis of the observations and interviews. The study finds that RE teachers in Sweden use and relate to various forms of media to a large extent in their daily teaching practices, and that these engagements with mediated religion illustrate the complex balance between the individual agency of the teacher on the one hand, and the media dynamics of amplification, framing and performative agency, and co-structuring, on the other. The teachers’ practices in relation to this are in the study viewed as a form of institutional work that is both caused by, and a contributing factor to, an increased mediatization of contemporary Swedish RE. The findings of the four articles are discussed in light of previous research on mediatization of religion in a Nordic context, specifically with regard to literacy and authority. The author argues that by studying these processes within an educational setting – a context that until recently has been under-explored within mediatization of religion research – the study provides new empirical as well as theoretical knowledge not only to the field of sociology of religion, but also to research on authority and religious education.
The dissertation can be found here
Congratulations Gry Espedal!
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RVS Ph.D. student Gry Espedal has completed a Ph.D. on an innovative topic about values in a faith-based organization.
The title of her project is "Being Compassionate- Institutionalizing through values work in a faith-based organization"
Read more about Espedals project at the VID homepage: https://www.vid.no/nyheter/vid-gratulerer-gry-espedal-med-vel-gjennomfort-disputas/
New Honorary Doctors Appointed at Uppsala University - Nancy T. Ammerman
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Congratulations to professor Nancy T. Ammerman for her Honorary Doctors Appoinment at Uppsala University!
Ammerman has been an important part of the RVS Research School/ MF School of theology, religion and society for many years.
This is what the Uppsala university writes:
"The nine faculties at Uppsala University have decided on who they wish to appoint as honorary doctors this academic year. The new honorary doctors include researchers in fields as diverse as string theory, maternal healthcare, evolutionary biology, the European history of ideas, prostata cancer and preschool pedagogy.
Honorary doctor, or doctor honoris causa, is a title awarded to those who have made an outstanding scientific contribution or otherwise promoted research at the university. It is always the faculties themselves who appoint honorary doctors, rather than the vice-chancellor or university management in general.
Faculty of Theology: Nancy T. Ammerman is professor of sociology of religion at the Sociology Department of the College of Arts and Sciences and in the School of Theology at Boston University. Professor Ammerman is a prominent researcher in the field of “lived religion”, which argues for the study of how religion is expressed in daily life, rather than attempting to understand its individual and societal significance through dogma and organisations. Her books Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives and Sacred Stories and Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life are central works in the field’s theoretical and methodological development and are used in many research topics within theology and religious sciences. Professor Ammerman is the recipient of several awards for the contribution her previous studies of fundamentalist Christian congregations in the United States have made to understanding the internal dynamics and societal role of these movements. She served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion from 2004-2005, Chair of the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association from 2000-2001 and President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion from 1995-1996."
https://www.uu.se/en/news-media/news/article/?id=13342&typ=artikel