By Joel Barnes and Ian Hesketh By the time Charles Darwin died on 19 April 1882, he had become a scientific celebrity, widely known for his studies of evolution that many believed transformed the way humans understood themselves in relation to the natural world. Since then his memory, and his celebrity, have been reshaped and rewritten many times over in different social, scientific, religious and political settings. We have had Darwin the secular saint, Darwin the national icon, Darwin the genius of rare insight, Darwin the model of patient scientific empiricism, Darwin the reckless purveyor ..read more

By Sayori Ghoshal In 2022, I began working on an INSBS-funded grant project on the impact of race science and statistics on religious and caste identities in colonial India. Under colonial rule, Indian scientists had rejected the claim that Europeans were racially superior to Indians. However, they had not dismissed race as a scientific object. Instead, from the 1920s, Indian scientists had sought to measure the extent of racial mixing between castes and religious groups. Asking where Indian Muslims had come from and whether Christians were indigenous to the subcontinent, they calculated physi ..read more

By Dr. Emma Merkling In late 2022 I began working on an INSBS-funded grant project on the scientific testing of the spiritualist medium Mina ‘Margery’ Crandon in Boston, c. 1925. ‘Margery’ was arguably the best-known medium in America at the time, having been made famous by a series of investigations into her mediumship initially funded by the popular magazine Scientific American. These investigations were conducted in Margery’s Boston home by an international group of physicians, physicists, psychical researchers, theologians, and stage magicians (among others) seeking to establish the genuin ..read more

By Dr. Thoko Kamwendo I am busy putting together an edited collection of essays that take an STS approach to the study of science and religion, funded by the INSBS. As many of you know, there are several parts to creating an edited volume, including making tricky decisions about the cover.   I recently received options for the front cover of the volume from Palgrave who will hopefully publish it sometime in the new year. As a freelance graphic designer, I really wanted a chance to design the front cover myself. But it was not to be. There are rules around covers of edited volumes tha ..read more

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 telescopes – the James Webb Space Telescope and the 30 Metre Telescope on Mauna Kea; the role of Natural ..read more

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 identities drive perceptions of conflict in unexpected ways. Carola presents the in-depth results of her ..read more

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 religious and non-religious individuals in Canada coped with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandem ..read more

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 attitudes to abortion across 70 countries, before presenting findings of more in-depth qualitative wor ..read more

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 eight countries investigate the relationship between science and religion using diverse sociological, social psychological, historical and media/cultural studies methods. Focusing ..read more

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 co-authored contribution. As well as hosting the podcast, both James and Will are scholars very much at the intersection of these disciplines, and are also con ..read more