Wednesdays, 4:10pm, in the Martin Hall unless otherwise stated All welcome. For enquiries, please contact Dr Alysa Ghose: alysa.ghose@ed.ac.uk Semester 2: Spring 2024 Date Speaker Topic 17 January All School Seminar 'The Digital in Theology and Religious Studies' 31 January Kavita Maya (Adjunct Professor at Syracuse University London) ‘Decolonising a Dream: The Politics of Race, Gender and Spirituality in the Contemporary Goddess Movement' 14 February Professor Matthew Novenson Inaugural Lecture: ‘The Bad Bible in the Twenty-First Century’ Register 28 February Opinderit Takhar (Associate Professor of Sikh Studies at University of Wolverhampton) ‘Caste dynamics in Panjabi faith groups’ 13 March Karen Skinazi (Associate Professor of Literature and Culture at the University of Bristol) Title TBC Jointly held with Religion and Literature 27 March Sneha Roy (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity) 'The Buddhist Nuns and Dialogue in Wartime Myanmar: Understanding the "Banality of Othering"' 4 April Yonah Matemba (Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland) 'Invoking the 'Power of Protest': Anticoloniality and the Scottish Religious Education Curriculum' Semester 1: Autumn 2023 Date Speaker Topic 11 October Dr. Shai Feraro, The University of Haifa and the Open University of Israel "Studying UK Occult and New Age Spirituality Bookshops, c1893-c1993." 25 October Dr Richard Savile Smith, Independent Researcher Book Launch "Acute Religious Experiences: Madness, Psychosis and Religious Studies" Discussant: Professor Ann Taves, University of California, Santa Barbara 8 November Dr Theo Wildcroft, The Open University UK "“The Yoga Police are Real”: recent reforms in the institutionalisation of yoga teaching"" Discussant: Marissa Clarke, University of Edinburgh 22 November Dr. Jolynna Sinanan, University of Manchester "Knowing Everest"