The Science & Belief in Society Podcast

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 globalisation when thinking about the reception of scientific ideas.

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, Dr. Vivian Dzokoto chats with Richard and James about her research on emotions and Ghanaian understandings of the mind based on an analysis of Akan proverbs.

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 Richard, Elaine and David, challenge some of the commonly held assumptions about the interrelation between atheism and science and by exploring atheist scientists’ diverse views of religion, their perspectives on the limits to what science can explain, and their views of meaning and morality.

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 issues with James and Will is today's guest, Dr Anna Halafoff, Associate Professor in Sociology at Deakin University, Melbourne, who explores these issues in the Australian context. Anna dissects the rise and development of ‘(con)spirituality’ online, the shifting political make-up of these communities, and how, beyond the pandemic, these communities and the individuals participating in them can be seen as responding to the social and economic conditions imposed by neoliberalism.

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 recording different types of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays - were used to explore what we now think of as the 'supernatural'. The team show that during this period, phenonema such as the ability of a medium to channel the spirits of the dead, or the physical manifestations of this ability such as the production of ectoplasm, were open to scientific debate, having not yet fallen outside the boundaries of legitimate scientific study. Similarly, what phenomena it was possible for novel technologies such as radio and photography to record or capture was not yet settled. Spiritualists, occultists, scientists, as well as magicians and outright con-artists (with more than one of these labels often applying to the same individual) used these novel technologies variously to evidence or debunk various claims, draw boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate scientific and spiritualist or occult practises, whilst also satisfying a Victorian public for whom attending a séance, for example, was a popular form of entertainment. The team discuss this fascinating history with reference to some of the technological artefacts and other objects of the period, which are held by the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library, and which were implicated in some of the most high-profile contemporary controversies e.g. the Cottingley fairies.

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, Tom’s currently working on a project investigating vaccine hesitancy and vaccine scepticism in Australia titled “Improving Vaccination Rates in Australia: Analysing Media, Religion and Policy.”. You can listen to a special podcast we recorded with Tom on this topic here. You can read Tom’s Researcher Profile here.

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 within the cultural and social identities of the non-religious and how this interrelation can be related to different existential outlooks. Dr Lois Lee is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent, and is the Principal Investigator on the Understanding Unbelief programme. You can read her Researcher Profile here.

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 thesis,” the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocably at odds. The book recasts the role of two influential figures in the history of the ‘conflict thesis’, John William Draper and Andrew Dixon-White, and relocates the origins of the view of science and religion as being in perennial and irreconcilable conflict in a specifically liberal protestant tradition. In the episode, Dr Ungureanu also tells us a bit about his historical method and describes his dream library…

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 provides an insight into the (social and traditional) media landscapes in South Africa and Nigeria, and how these in turn shape and influence beliefs, including shaping public attitudes during the COVID19 pandemic.