Listen to "Studying Religion and the Internet"

You can (if you really want to!) download an MP3 of my session, "Studying Religion and the Internet," at the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' study-day "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion," from the Birkbeck webpage here. I've done one other podcast - a reading of my chapter, "Theo(b)logy: The Technological Transformation of Theology," for Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolusion - and already knew that I hated the sound of my voice, so I was really not looking forward to listening to this. But it's not as bad as I remembered it being!


I had thought that it was the worst presentation I've ever done. Partly because we were waiting for another participant which meant that the time we had for discussion at the end was truncated; partly because I felt rushed anyway, getting everything in that I felt was valuable to know about studying religion and the Internet (which could have had a whole day to itself!); and partly because I felt I had written so many different things on religion and the Internet and in so many different formats that I got lulled into a false sense of security regarding my material: I felt that because I had already written particular points (and written them, of course, so well!) that I was loathe to change it; the result was that I felt I was reading my notes much more than I usually do when presenting. I should have had more confidence in my own abilities to make sense of sparse notes, rather than trying to convey that "already written perfectly" point, if that makes sense! Nevermind. It's there if you want it!