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Noteworthy
Read about announcements, special mentions and many noteworthy activities. Archives from previous years are available at the bottom of the page.
From the year
Lori Beaman and Valérie Amiraux are invited panelists for a colloquium on La religion de près by Albert Piette on the 20th anniversary of its publication. The colloquium, part of the PENSER LE RELIGIEUX, D’HIER ÀDEMAIN : OBJETS, SAVOIRS, INTERVENTIONS series, is being held at the Université du Québec à Montréal, August 27-29. For more information please click here.
It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of Donald Boisvert. Donald was a generous and supportive colleague, whose work offered invaluable insights into same-sex desire, masculinities and sexual pedagogy. He will be deeply missed. Donations can be made to the Donald L. Boisvert Scholarship for Gay and Lesbian Studies, details can be found here.
Congratulations to Lori Beaman for winning the CSSR 2018 Book Prize for her book Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity, the prize was presented to Lori at Congress by the president of the CSSR Heather Shipley.
Lori Beaman will be delivering the Keynote address Wednesday May 29 at the Understanding Unbelief conference in Rome, hosted at the Pontificia Universitya Gregoriana.
Join us for "Atheist Theory: Developing ways of thinking about non-belief that don't involve religion" by Callum Brown from the University of Glasgow. Lecture will be held Thursday March 28, beginning at 4:00 pm at the University of Ottawa (129 Simard, 60 University Private) as part of Critical Thinkers in Religion, Law and Social Theory.
Frédéric Dejean will be giving a lecture entitled « Entre visibilité et invisibilité: nouvelle géographie des faits religieux en contexte urbain » The lecture will be held Thursday March 14, beginning at 12:15 pm, in FSS4004 at the University of Ottawa.
Kiyonobu Date will be giving a lecture entitled "La notion de « religion » dans la cour de justice : Une étude comparée entre le Québec et le japon" as part of the Critical Thinkers in Religion, Law and Social Theory Lecture series. Lecture will be held Thursday March 7, beginning at 5:30pm, in FSS4006 at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Lori Beaman held a talk at the Department of Canadian Heritage on March 1, 2019 titled Deep Equality as part of the Big Ideas lecture Series. For more information please click here.
On November 1, 2018, Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and Social Change Lori G. Beaman joined David Koussens from L’Université de Sherbrooke and Bertrand Lavoie, Postdoctoral Researcher at L’Université de Sherbrooke and uOttawa for the launch of Lavoie’s new book La fonctionnaire et le hijab: Liberté de religion et laïcité dans les institutions publiques québécoises (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2018). The event was held at Olivieri Bookstore In Montréal. To see the video click here
Congratulations to Jennifer Selby, Amelie Barras and Lori G. Beaman for the publication of Beyond Accommodation: Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians by UBC Press.
Congratulations to Bertrand Lavoie for his publication of: La fonctionnaire et le hijab. Liberté de religion et laïcité dans les institutions publiques québécoises by the Presses de l'Université de Montréal.
Peter Beyer, Alyshea Cummins, Scott Craig and Manvitha Singamsetty have released the final report for their work Cultural and Religious Identity among 18-45 Year-olds in Canada Survey
Great to see RDP student team members Cory Steele, Christine Cusack, Zaheeda Alibhai and Sana Patel and to hear their presentations at XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, held in Toronto July 2018.
Lori Beaman, Peter Beyer, Doug Ezzy, Anna Halafoff and Heather Shipley presented findings and related research from the Religion and Diversity Project at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, held in Toronto July 2018.
The book entitled "Exploring Religion and Diversity in Canada", edited by our Team Member Catherine Holtmann, has been published by Springer. This book is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning about the many ways in which religious diversity is manifest in day-to-day life Canada. For a more detailed description of this book, please click here.
The “Visions of World-Repairing: Social Imaginaries of Acting Together” workshop brought together team members and invited guests at L’Université de Montréal on June 20, 2018. Organizers Timothy Stacey and Lori G. Beaman welcomed Solange Lefebvre, Dia Dabby, Peter Beyer, Julia Itel, Brian Clarke, Haydeé Gómez Avilez and Christine L. Cusack. For more information, please visit here.
"Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity" by Lori G. Beaman has been highlighted in a blog post called Campaign for the American Reader as well as the page 99 project.
To view the post please click here.
Congratulations to Christine Cusack who has received funding from both the Joseph H. Fichter (ASR) and Religious Research Association for her research project entitled “Disenchantment and transition among mainstream Mormon women: Understanding non-religious identity construction and organized unbelief."
Félicitations à Jennifer A. Selby, Amélie Barras et Lori G. Beaman pour la publication de Le Terroriste, l’Homme éclairé et le Patriarche. Les figures qui hantent le quotidien des musulmanes.
Congratulations to Solange Lefebvre and Guillaume St-Laurent for their publication of: (2018) Dix ans après la Commission Bouchard-Taylor, comment évaluer ses retombées? Échec pour les uns et succès pour les autres, comment en juger?
Lori Beaman as a respondent on the Plenary Session "Summing up 10 Years of Research and Sketching a New Research Agenda," IMPACT of Religion International Interdisciplinary Conference, Uppsala 24-26 April 2018.
Congratulations to team member Pascale Fournier, who has been appointed President and CEO of the Trudeau Foundation.
We are pleased to announce funding was awarded for partnership with the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation in a project led by Fethi Mansouri funded by the Australian Research Council. Lori Beaman will participate as co-investigator in the project entitled “A Transcultural Approach to Belonging and Engagement among Migrant Youth.”
The Project Report and Fact Sheet for the "Producing Islam(s) in Canada" workshop, organized by Jennifer Selby, Melanie Adrian, and Amélie Barras, is now available on our website! To read the Project Report, click here. To view the Fact Sheet, please click here.
We would like to extend our gratitude to Christine Cusack, Religion and Diversity Project Student Caucus Leader, for her continuing extraordinary work supporting our student network. Christine keeps the Student Caucus updated via our Facebook page and student Twitter account (@RDPStudents) – follow along to learn more!
We invite you to read a lecture delivered by team member Linda Woodhead on January 19, 2016 as part of the British Academy's season on 'Faith'. The talk titled "The rise of ‘no religion’ in Britain: The emergence of a new cultural majority", was published in December 2016 edition of the Journal of the British Academy.
To read the article, please click here.
We are pleased to announce that our Project Director, Lori G. Beaman, has been awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and Social Change!
Click here to read the announcement that was posted on the University of Ottawa's website.
We would like to congratulate team member Natasha Bakht on receiving a SSHRC grant for her research initiative titled:"Examining the rights of Niqab-wearing women in the global north". This research will focus on the growing trend in western liberal democracies to prohibit Muslim women who cover their faces with a veil from participating in certain aspects of public life.
Team member Benjamin Berger will be speaking at The University of Ottawa for the Public Law Group Speaker Series on Wednesday, November 16 from 11:30am to 1pm. His talk is titled: "Law's Religion: Religious Difference and the Claims of Constitutionalism".
PLease click here to obtain additional information on this presentation.
Congratulations to our research associate Amélie Barras, on receiving a SSHRC Insight Development Grant in July for a project entitled: "Shaping Human Rights: Faith-based NGOs at the United Nations Human Rights Council"!
Congratulations to all of the Religion and Diversity Project members who participated in the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association Conference from October 28-30th! Conference presentations were made by: Team Members Nancy Nason-Clark, Susan Palmer, Sam Reimer, Linda Woodhead and student team members Zaheeda P Alibhai and Christine L. Cusack.
Please click here for the conference program.
We invite you to read an article in the Chronicle Live, titled: "St Nicholas Cathedral to consider why people are turning away from religion", featuring an interview with team member Linda Woodhead. In this article, she discusses the reduction in church attendance in the last few decades.
Please click here to read the article.
Congratulations to our Research Associate Anna Halafoff and Matthew Clarke on the publication of their book entitled "Religion and Development in the Asia-Pacific: Sacred places as development spaces".
To obtain more information on this publication or to purchase a copy, please click here.
Congratulations to Lori G. Beaman (Project Director), Peter Beyer (team member) and Christine L. Cusack (student team member) on contributing a chapter (Young People and Religious Diversity: A Canadian Perspective) to the book titled: "Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity", edited by Elisabeth Arweck!
Please click here for more information on this new publication.
Congratulations to team member Pascale Fournier on having been elected to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada!
Please click here for more information.
We were delighted to have so many Religion and Diversity Project members participate in the 78th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (August 19-21, 2016, Seattle, Washington). Conference presentations were made by: Project Director Lori G. Beaman (Presidential Address), Team Members Peter Beyer, James Richardson, Michael Wilkinson, Nancy Nason-Clark, Solange Lefebvre, Gary Bouma, Pamela Dickey Young, Linda Woodhead (Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture), James Beckford and Susan J. Palmer, Postdoctoral Fellows Sara Teinturier and Monica Grigore Dovlete, Student Team Members Christine L. Cusack, Keelin Pringnitz and Leo Van Arragon, Project Manager Heather Shipley and Research Associate Cathy Holtmann.
Please click here for the conference program.
The Religion and Diversity Project would like to congratulate Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens (University of Montreal) on having been chosen as one of the new members of the Royal Society of Canada!
Please click here to read the article featured on the University of Montreal's website.
Congratulations to student team member, Natalia Sudeyko (University of Victoria), on her report titled: "The Skirt Project: connecting gender, religion, and colonialism", written for the Reconciliation Syllabus Blog for The Skirt Project!
Click here to read her entry.
Congratulations to team member Rukhsana Ahmed and to her co-investigators, Kevin Pottie and Luisa Veronis, on obtaining a Syrian Refugee Arrival, Resettlement and Integration Grant in the amount of $25,000 from SSHRC for their project titled: "Staying in touch, connecting, integrating: Social media use of newly arrived Syrian refugee youth in Canada".
We would like to invite you to watch a talk given by our Director, Lori G. Beaman, at the Seminários Cebrap do 1° Semestre de 2015, in Brazil, titled "Can Prayer be Universal?"
To access the video, please click here.
Congratulations to student team member, Priscila Dallva (MITACS Globalink Research Intern) for being awarded a MITACS Globalink Graduate Fellowship Award to pursue a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University!
For more information on MITACS grants, please click here.
Congratulations to team member, Michael Wilkinson, for having been awarded the Religion and Diversity Project's Innovation Grant (2016-2017) for his project titled "Views of Diversity in a Korean Congregation: A Follow-up Study".
We would like to congratulate team member, Pascale Fournier, Research Chair in Legal Pluralism and Comparative Law and Professor at the Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa, on receiving the Gloire de l’Escolle medal from Université Laval, the Capital Educators’ Award from the Ottawa Network for Education (ONFE) and an honorary feature on “Wall of Distinguished Graduates” of Cégep Garneau.
Congratulations to our research associate Julia Martínez-Ariño, as well as team member Solange Lefebvre for their article titled: "Resisting or Adapting? How Private Catholic High Schools in Quebec Respond to State Secularism and Religious Diversification", published in Eurostudia.
To read this article, please click here.
We would like to congratulate our team member Rukhsana Ahmed, and Primary Investigator Monica Gattinger, on receiving a SSHRC Connection Grant in the February 2016 competition. Funding was granted for the project titled:"Interdisciplinary perspectives on democratization and evidence-based-decision-making in risk management".
We would like to thank our team members, student team members, postdoctoral fellows and guests for an engaging and productive annual team meeting in Montréal! With many wonderful presentations, workshops, roundtables and panels, the Religion and Diversity Project meeting offered much space for fruitful dialogue and comparisons.
Congratulations to our Team Member Anver Emon on the publication of the edited volume entitled Islamic and Jewish Legal Reasoning: Encountering our Legal Other (Oneworld Publications, 2016). This book brings together a scholar of Islamic law and a scholar of Jewish law and explores a new perspective that not “only provides a deeper understanding of the other’s legal tradition, but it also reveals new insights into the one’s own legal tradition, shedding light on what we had previously been too close to observe.” For more information on this publication, please click here.
Our Project Director Lori G. Beaman and our Team Members James T. Richardson will be participating in the Religions and Human Rights International Conference that will be held from April 14-15, 2016, in Padua, Italy. For more information and to obtain the conference programme, please click here.
Submissions for Volume 9, The Changing Faces of Catholicism of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, edited by our Team Member Solange Lefebvre and Alfonso Pérez-Agote, are now being accepted. The editors are seeking out contributors who can address questions raised in the sociology of religion about Catholicism with authors representing regional and cultural variation. For more information, please click here.
A second edition of the book by our Team Member Kim Knott entitled Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction has been published by Oxford University Press (February 2016). This book “offers an overview of this major religion, discussing key topics such as the centrality of the Veda as religious texts, the role of Brahmins, gurus, and storytellers in the transmission of divine truths, and the cultural and moral importance of epics such as the Ramayana.” For more information, please click here.
The New Religious Movements, Minorities and Media conference, organised by Solange Lefebvre’s Chair for the Management of Cultural and Religious Diversity in collaboration with the Religion and Diversity Project and the Centre d’écoute et d’interprétation des nouvelles recherches du croire (CEINR) is currently underway at the University of Montréal. For more information and to find out which team members, student team members and research associates are participating in this event, please click here.
Congratulations to our Team Member Linda Woodhead who was named a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. “The new Fellows are drawn from across the spectrum of academia, practitioners, and policy makers and have been recognised after a thorough process of peer review for the excellence and impact of their work in the social sciences." For more information, please click here.
Our Project Director Lori G. Beaman and our Team Members Peter Beyer and Paul Bramadat were interviewed for an article entitled “Our national folly: Canada endeavours to be secular and multicultural at the same time. Who are we trying to kid?” written by Trisha Elliott and published by the UCObserver. To read this article, please click here.
Our Postdoctoral Fellow Sara Teinturier will be giving a lecture entitled “De la régulation des cultes à la gestion de la diversité religieuse” on Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at the University of Sherbrooke. This lecture is organised by the Centre de recherche Société, Droit et Religions de l'Université de Sherbrooke (SoDRUS) in collaboration with the chaire de recherche droit, religion et laïcité. For more information, please click here.
A book launch for Storming Zion: Government Raids of Religious Communities, written by Stuart A. Wright and our Team Member Susan J. Palmer took place on Wednesday, February 18, 2016 at 12pm at McGill University and was hosted by the Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR). For more information, please click here.
We are pleased to announce that the Vocabulary for the Study of Religion Online, edited by Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad, is now available on the Brill website. This online dictionary (in English) includes entries by our Project Director Lori G. Beaman (Functions of Religion), and Team Members Michael Wilkinson (Globalisation) and Winnifred Sullivan (Law). For more information, please click here.
Congratulations to our Research Associate Amélie Barras on the publication of the book (edited with François Dermange and Sarah Nicolet) entitled Réguler le religieux dans les sociétés liberals: Les nouveaux défis. To obtain more information on this publication or to purchase a copy, please click here.
We are pleased to announce that our Team Member Barbara Thériault, our Postdoctoral Fellow Monica Grigore, Yanick Noiseaux and Elise Dumont-Lagacé are organising a series of documentary screenings entitled “Les mercredis scientifiques”. The first event of the Winter 2016 series will be held on February 3, 2016, at the University of Montreal and will feature the documentary “Bar de jour et autres histoires” by Corina Radu. For more information on this series, please click here.
We would like to congratulate our Student Team Member Bertrand Lavoie who received the Alan B. Gold grant awarded by the University or Montreal’s Conseil de la Faculté de droit. This grant recognises his excellent academic track record, the relevance of his thesis, the quality of his many publications and his wide range of teaching and research experience. To read Bertrand's biography and research statement, please click here (French).
Our Team Member Pascale Fournier will be organising an event entitled “Literature, Law and Personal Narratives: A Conversation with Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella” that will be held at the University of Ottawa on Monday, February 1, 2016. The Honourable Rosalie Abella, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, will be discussing the text that has most influenced her way of thinking and her own personal journey. For more information on this event, please click here.
We invite you to discover the Institute for Social Futures which is co-directed by John Urry and our Team Member Linda Woodhead and hosted at Lancaster University (UK). "The aim of the Institute for Social Futures is to improve thinking, visioning, analysis and data relating to futures. It will bring high-quality social science theory and research into productive relations with science, technology, health and management and through working with many external partners." For more information, please click here.
We are happy to announce the publication of a new book edited by our Team Member James A. Beckford entitled Migration and Religion, Volume 1 (The International Library of Studies on Migration series, 2 volumes). "This wide-ranging collection of articles explores these questions in different periods of history, regions of the world and traditions of faith." For more details on this publication, please click here.
Congratulations to our Religion and Diversity Project Postdoctoral Fellow Monica Grigore on the publication of her article entitled “Tamara’s Illness. Pilgrims, Fate, and Lived Religion in Post-Communist Romania” in the Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe journal (Volume 8, Issue 1, 2015). To read this article, please click here.
The "The Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad" project, co-organised by our Team Member Winnifred F. Sullivan and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, is offering a two-year Luce postdoctoral fellowship in Religion, Politics, and Global Affairs. Applications are welcome from scholars working at the intersections of religion, law, and politics in national and/or global contexts. For more details on this postdoctoral fellowship, please click here.
2015 - Archives
2014 - Archives
2013 - Archives
2012 - Archives
2011 - Archives
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
Le Berkley Center at Georgetown University a été créé au sein du bureau de John J. DeGioia, Président de Georgetown, en mars 2006. Le centre a été conçu afin de miser sur les forces de Georgetown: l'excellence académique; son emplacement à Washington, DC; sa portée internationale et sa tradition catholique et jésuite d'ouverture aux autres religions et au vaste monde séculier. Le généreux soutien de William R. Berkley, un membre du conseil d'administration de l'université, a permis la croissance rapide du centre.
Pour plus de renseignements, veuillez cliquer ici.
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The Project is happy to provide information about research centres, initiatives and projects across Canada and beyond that are focusing on the examination of religion, diversity, pluralism and society through its “Research Centres” page. Led by our Team Member Pamela Klassen and housed at the University of Toronto, the mandate of the Religion in the Public Sphere initiative is to examine how religion manifests in public spaces, institutions, and interactions, and consider the challenges and possibilities of religious diversity in Toronto and around the globe. To learn more about this initiative, please click here.