Religion, Martyrdom and Global Uncertainties 1914-2014

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The leadership programme proposes a focus on concepts of religion as a pivot for bringing together wider issues in the Ideologies and Beliefs strand of Global Uncertainties itself, and in related AHRC and ESRC programmes. Since 9/11 religious issues have been prominent both in popular and journalistic perceptions of security and in academic enquiry, but informed synthesis regarding the importance of religion relative to other factors remains in short supply. The leadership activities will seek to integrate key insights from relevant projects, exploring both the various understanding of religion and quasi-religion (in relation to ideologies such as nationalism and Islamism), and weighing their importance against other non-religious factors. The programme will achieve an authoritative pooling of substantial and diverse expertise, distilled and presented in an accessible and engaged manner to users in religious leadership, public and NGO policy and practice and the media. Work will proceed in three phases. First, there will be telephone interviews with researchers designed to highlight key insights from their work and to elucidate complementary and contrasting perspectives. The outcomes from these interviews will be summarized in an initial working paper. Second, the working paper will be disseminated; user responses gathered through two seminars and the project website; and selected researchers will attend a symposium intended to distil insights and implications for users and to present them in an accessible form. Third, a widely-circulated hardcopy summary of the outcomes together with online video resources will be made available to users, who will be invited to attend one of a series of seminars to be held at various locations around the UK at which the implications of the work will be further discussed and developed. The research project will examine the development of the concept of martyrdom and sacrificial death in Britain and Ireland since the outbreak of the First World War. Such an enquiry will help to balance the preoccupation of researchers since 9/11 in 2001 with Islamic views of martyrdom/suicide attacks by a focus on the Christian and culturally Christian context, which remains under-researched in this period. There will be two main methods. First, there will be archival, library, and web-based research on historic sources, including books and pamphlets, newspapers and online databases, supplemented as necessary by site visits. Particular focal points will be the First World War, including the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, and the 1920 interment of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey; the Second World War, including Nazi persecution of European Christians, and the early 1980s, including the IRA hunger strikes and the Falklands War. Second, there will be a series of semi-structured interviews with political and religious activists, carried out in partnership with the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast, in four contrasting locations in Britain and Ireland - Belfast, Bradford, Dublin and London. They will explore contemporary perceptions of historic 'martyrdom' events in the run up to the centenaries of 1914 and 1916; recollections of the early 1980s; and responses to present-day suicide attacks, sectarian murders in Northern Ireland, and casualties in Afghanistan. The outcomes will feed into the programme of leadership activities outlined above, and will be publicised through the website and discussed in the programme seminars. They will also result in journal articles, an academic monograph, and articles contributing to public debate. The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (4 August 2014) will occur in the final months of the project and offer particular opportunities for dissemination and media interest. The programme will be guided by an advisory group which will offer wide experience of public engagement and strong networks for securing non-academic impact.