Research Methods: Religion and the Internet

My workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet - Challenges and Opportunities: Theoretical, Practical and Ethical," at the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion" day at Birkbeck went okay. I definitely think that my topic could (should?!?) have been given an entire day in itself, which meant that I had a lot to get through in my presentation. They sprung on me that it was going to be recorded, so you should be able to download the mp3 soon... if you particularly want to listen to me nervously speaking! I usually speak using less notes and I think you can tell, as I felt rather beholden to using the phrases I'd written down rather than speaking more off the cuff. Oh well, lesson learnt!

But it was good to meet up with old and new colleagues, and I particularly enjoyed a presentation by Helen Purcell (Open University) on her position as a Pagan academic that also reflected on narrative. Another conference delegate mentioned an academic who decided to write a novel instead of a thesis because that seemed to better reflect the experiences of her participants and her time spent with them. It generated some more thoughts in relation to my own concerns about having to "represent" the "truth" about my participants, whose notions of "truth" are often neither "representational" nor "non-representational," but are of what I'm calling "undecidable representationality." This dilemma leads to interesting questions about the literary dimension of the academic presentation of research "findings." Anyway, enough of that...

It was ashame that I missed fellow Lancaster PhD student Janet Eccles' paper on the "pitfalls and possibilities" of conducting an interview-based study in her local community. But I was good to hear about some of the PhD students just starting out in internet-based studies, like Anna Rose Stewart (University of Sussex). It was also great to catch up with Gordon Lynch, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. Susannah Rigg (Birkbeck), me and Sim's housemate when she was at Lancaster, was on hand in an organisational role and it was good to chat over coffee.

Anyway, here's the powerpoint presentation from my workshop. There's a very illustrative list of resources at the end of it.

Studying Religion And The Internet

View more OpenOffice presentations from Katharine Moody.

The Experiment Launches

Way, way back in April, I blogged about the possibility of open sourcing the research process. I have been privileged to so far interview and/or survey about 40 people around the UK, and will have the chance to reflect on those conversations and attempt a thesis. I would love this blog to be a space where those taking part in the research (and any other interested online others) can also discuss and explore these issues. This experiment may not work (technologically and/or methodologically) but I’m game to try it.

I’m aware of other PhD students working on “emerging church” research who keep their own blogs (Im a particular fan of Paul Teusner’s research on Australian “ec” blogs) but I’d like this to be more than a place where I post “updates” on what I’m doing for you guys to read and that’s it.

Hopefully this participatory methodology for the blogosphere will encourage everyone (myself included) to “outgrow” the research-based roles with which we entered our relationship together. Some of you may want the relationship to end when I send you a transcript of the interview, and that is fine too. Others may be interested in taking things further.

Whereas in the interviews some topics could not be developed as perhaps we might have wished (given that I have specific research questions to explore), those topics might be able to flourish here. This blog does not have a specific purpose, beyond being a place where we can converse further. I might have a particular point to make in a particular post, but I won’t push an agenda of answering research questions to the exclusion of the other places you might wish to take our conversation.

Of course, I’m not kidding myself that this is going to become the next hot spot of interactivity in the blogosphere, either. But maybe a little conversation will take place here, and that’d be great.

Papers, Supervisions, and Fieldwork - Oh My! Oh, and Greenbelt!!!

The paper on Authorship and Authority in the blogosphere went well at the postgraduate seminar series. Some good discussion points afterwards regarding emerging social structures in the blogosphere. Patrick Carr (a fellow PhD student from Lancaster University) made some very interesting reflections concerning spiritual disciplines and the aesthetics of the moral self - something which I think may have a great many resonances with the neo-monasticism of many emerging Christian communities.

My supervision with Deborah the next day helped me rethink my intentions for the Reading Spiritualities chapter, situating the blogging activities of emerging Christian communities in the context of shifting notions of authority. I'll be working on it over the next few weeks, for the July 31st deadline (argh!), as well as trying to schedule my summer of interviewing.

I've had lots of emails from people wanting to participate in this research project, generated through a nearly exhaustive email advertising campaign that I worried might constitute spamming(!) and a hugely helpful post about my PhD by Jason Clark. At the moment, I think I might have around 30-40 questionnaire responses winging their way to me through cyberspace, which I hope to follow up with face-to-face interviews over the next few months. I'm really looking forward to getting to sit down with people and explore their beliefs. I hope to complete the fieldwork by Greenbelt at the end of August!

Speaking of Greenbelt, the line-up looks excellent. And the New Forms Cafe (my favouritist space) looks on great again this year. There are a whole host of communities with whom I've been in contact about this research, including: Sanctuary Birmingham, Ikon, The Garden, Dream, Grace, MayBe, Safe Space, Journey, Moot, Sanctuary Bath, Foundation, hOME, and Sanctus 2nds. And I haven't quite grown out of Delirious? yet!!! Hope it doesn't rain, though!

Call for Research Participants

I'm moving into the fieldwork stage of my project, exploring the beliefs of individuals involved with emerging Christian communities. I'm particularly interested in how contemporary Christians make sense of the world in which we live.

I would like to hear from you if you are interested in taking part in any stage of this research, but there are two fixed criteria:

• You must be resident in the United Kingdom
• You must be involved with an emerging church (however you define the term) and/or engaged in an emerging conversation between Christianity and contemporary culture

Please email me if you are interested in any or all of the following:

• Participation in a questionnaire via email. There are 8 questions regarding your beliefs about Christianity and contemporary culture
• Participation in a face-to-face interview, at a later date and place of your convenience

I will ensure confidentiality at all stages of the research by attributing your words to a pseudonym of your own choosing. Alternatively, if you wish to be identified, this can also be arranged.

Katharine Moody k.moody1@lancaster.ac.uk