The Science & Belief in Society Podcast

Bernard Lightman, a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada, who is best known for his work on the Cultural History of Victorian Science and Religion, talks about some of the highlights of his career and his current international correspondence project digitizing the letters of the Irish physicist, John Tyndall.

Sociologists Dr Saleema Burney and Dr Stephen Jones, now at the University of Keele, were both part of the ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’ project at the University of Birmingham. In this episode they talk about their research exploring what Muslims think about science, drawing from their recent research project ‘Science and British Muslim Religious Leadership’. Taking a straightfor...

Dr Alexander Hall, an Assistant Professor at McMaster University in Canada who  studies the history ofbiology and environmental science in popular media, and Dr Sarah Qidwai at the University of York in the UK who researches science and Islam in the 19th century, discuss the importance of widening the scope of the history of science and religion.

In this episode, Dr Carissa Sharp, a social psychologist at the University of Birmingham, Dr Renny Thomas, a sociologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal, and Dr Arturo Fitz Herbert, from the Communications Department of the Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires in Argentina join Deborah Cohen to discuss what scientists really believe in, and crucially what...

In this episode, Peter Harrison, Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland, talks about his latest book, Some New World: myths of supernatural belief in a secular age , which explores the relationship between the natural and the supernatural across time, from Aristotle to the end of the 20th century.

Rachael Shillitoe is a sociologist and a senior social scientist in the British civil service. She was previously a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham where she studied what primary school age children think about religion. Dr Elizabeth Barnes is an Assistant Professor of Biology Education at Middle Tennessee State University, who explores how to teach culturally controvers...

Dr Anna Halafoff , an Associate Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Spirituality and Wellbeing (SWell) Research Network, SWELL, based at Deakin University in Melbourne, and Dr Tom Aechtner , Associate Professor at the University of Queensland where he researches Australian-specific sources of vaccine hesitancies around COVID-19 and other diseases and their relationship with religious bel...

Dr Amy Adamczyk, Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of City University of New York, and Dr Reynaldo Rivera and Dr Maria Sol Barbera, from the School of Communications at the Universidad Australin Buenos Aries in Argentina, discuss their research on how different contexts and personal religious beliefs shape people’s health-related attitudes and behaviors, in parti...

In the third episode of our new series, Dr Rebecca Catto, Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University (USA) who was for a decade a Principal Investigator on the Science and Religion, Exploring the Spectrum projects, talks about her research into science and non-religion.

John Evans, Tata Chancellor’s Chair in Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Institute of Practical Ethics of the University of California San Diego, talks about how his research shows that the religion and science debate should increasingly focus on moral conflict between religion and science, rather than on facts.  

Fern Elsdon-Baker, Professor of Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at the University of Birmingham, looks back at the successes of the network she founded in bringing together researchers from all over the world and from awide variety of disciplines, from psychology to politics and theology to sociology, to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between science and belief in people...

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....

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 method...

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 complete...

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 pla...

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...

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 C...

In this episode we welcome Dr Neil Stephens, Associate Professor in Technology and Society at the University of Birmingham. Neil discusses his 15+ year study of ‘cultured meat’; the processes of its scientific and technological development, how religious authorities have been involved in these processes, and the broader epistemological, ontological and sociological implications of his research. We...

In this episode (our first recorded in-person) we talk with distinguished historian of science Professor Bernard Lightman . We discuss his wide-ranging contributions to the historical study of science and religion, from his early work on the origins of agnosticism, to his views on more recent shifts and trends in the field - and the differences between T.H. Huxley and Richard Dawkins. 

The Science & Belief in Society Podcast is back - but for how much longer? In this opening episode of Season 3, James and Will welcome Dr Hauke Riesch , Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University, London, to talk about the end of the world... Narratives of the apocalypse - stories of how the world will end, and humanity's fate before, during and after these variously prophesied cataclys...

Religious practices and their effects are increasingly the subject of scientific investigation. In the field of Contemplative Science, mediative practices drawn from Buddhist traditions are united with techniques of analysis from cognitive and neurosciences. In this episode, James and Will welcome Mareike Smolka , a PhD Researcher at Maastricht University in Science and Technology Studies and Full...

In this episode, Richard and Will talk with Professor Adam Chepkwony, a Full Professor of Religion at the University of Kabianga in Kenya. Professor Chepkwony's work covers a wide range of topics including African Religion, Inter-religious Dialogue, Science and Religion, and more. In this episode, Professor Chepkwony provides his perspective on how issues like climate change and the COVID-19...

In this episode, Rachael and Richard talk with Dr Sarah Qidwai , a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Sarah’s work explores transnational and local perspectives on scientific disciplines during the long nineteenth century. In this episode, we discuss the focus of Sarah’s doctoral thesis, the Muslim polymath Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), and her latest project en...

Understanding public attitudes towards science has become an increasingly important area of research in recent decades, and the importance of this kind of work has only been heightened by the emergence of COVID-19, and the diverse and unpredictable public responses to scientific and medical advice during the pandemic. In this episode Will and Richard talk to Dr Baastian Rutjens , who investigates...

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 id...