...what do you think?
Since the completion of the project on 28 February 2011, the team has been very busy disseminating research findings across the world to academic and non-academic users. In the last nine months, we have spoken in 15 events, within the UK and abroad, including Canada, Australia, Malaysia, and Sweden. We are grateful for the highly positive feedback we have received, and the insights offered by various users, which will assist us tremendously in producing various future outputs.
Andrew - who was offered by the University of Ottawa the Distinguished Visiting Scholar Fellowship (October – November 2011) – had the opportunity to share our insights and experience with colleagues within the Religion and Diversity project, hosted by the University, and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.This project will soon embark on a piece of research similar to ours, and Andrew will participate actively as an advisor. We are delighted that our work has been useful to this initiative for international knowledge transfer.
In the meantime, we press on with the writing of the academic book that will be published by Ashgate in 2012……
Andrew, Michael & Sarah
November 2011
It is with great excitement – but also a tinge of sadness – that we completed our project with a celebratory conference on 25 February 2011 at the East Midlands Conference Centre, University of Nottingham. In the conference, we launched the research report, Religion, Youth and Sexuality: Selected Key Findings from a Multi-faith Exploration 
. If you would like a free printed copy, please contact Andrew at andrew.yip@nottingham.ac.uk
The conference was attended by 60 delegates who were primarily non-academic users. The report was instrumental to generating productive and meaningful discussions. We hope that it – and other forthcoming outputs – will continue to stimulate debate and discussion in this important area. We hope you like the photos taken on the day!
(click on the thumbnail image to enlarge)
We would like to once again express our deepest gratitude to everybody who has helped make this project a success. We are grateful, and we shall continue to produce high-quality outputs that contribute to academic and non-academic debates in the area of religion, youth and sexuality.
Thank you, and best wishes.
Andrew, Mike, and Sarah
February 2011
It has been a tremendously busy period for the project and it often feels like we are doing 20 things at once! We are still collecting data and all of us have been busy dashing round the country to conduct interviews. All of the people we have interviewed provided us with rich and powerful stories. Some are also very helpfully recording video diaries for us, giving us an invaluable everyday perspective on their lives and thoughts. We have also been disseminating emerging findings to different groups of people – not only academics, but also national organisations and young people themselves.
In February, Sarah went to the NUS offices in London to talk about our project in relation to students and faith. The NUS are very keen to support religious young people and they were interested in the current ongoing research projects that can help inform this. Sarah gave an overview of the project and outlined how students were particularly affected on campus, especially in terms of the levels of religious ignorance encountered.
In March, Sarah went to the Thomas Rotherham College in Rotherham to give a talk to A-level students about the project. The students were extremely interested in what we were doing, especially as the Head of Sociology there, Jo Roberts, outlined that most sociologists the students learn about are either dead, male or both! So the students really appreciated learning about what it’s like working on a real-life project and were interested in how we had gone about gathering our data.
Also in March Andrew spoke at the ‘Geographies of Religion’ conference in Newcastle on the various manifestations of intersection between sexuality and religion. Mike spoke to the conference ‘Innovative Methods in the Study of Religion’ in London. Here Mike shared some reflections on the research methods used in this project particularly focussing on the online questionnaires and video diaries. We think our methods have given us the ability to access people and information that we may not have been able to access in other ways, and so we are really happy to reflect on these methods with other academics. What do you think? Do share your experiences of taking part in the project with us.
In April, Sarah attended two conferences – the Sociology of Religion Study Group’s Annual Conference on ‘The Changing Face of Christianity’ at the University of Edinburgh where Sarah presented a paper on Christian young people and how they negotiate their sexualities in relation to having sex outside of marriage, celibacy, monogamy and attitudes to homosexuality, then Sarah hopped on a train to Glasgow Caledonian University to present at the British Sociological Association’s conference on ‘Inequalities and Social Justice’, where Sarah talked about the issue of gender and young people’s attitudes to gender equality and inequality within their religious traditions.
In the same month, Andrew spoke, in Washington DC, at the annual conference of the American Association of Geographers, within a stream entitled ‘Young people, religion, and place’. The paper reports on the challenges our respondents encounter in managing their sexual, religious, and youth identities within diverse spaces (e.g. religious space and youth culture).
In the next few months, we shall be taking our project further afield. Collectively, we shall be speaking at conferences in Poland, Ireland, Norway, USA, France, and Italy. We would not have been able to do this if our respondents have not contributed their stories. Thus, we are truly grateful!
As always, if you have any specific queries or comments about the research – do contact us at rys@nottingham.ac.uk .
Best wishes,
Sarah, Mike, and Andrew
April 2010
A Happy New Year to everyone and if you are in the UK, I hope the snow is proving to be a pleasure rather than a hindrance!
As a research team we have had a busy few months. Just before Christmas, I attended the Australian Association for the Study of Religions (AASR) conference in Melbourne, Australia, where the weather was a complete contrast to what we are experiencing here!
I presented a paper on the conference theme of religious difference, highlighting some emerging themes from the questionnaire stage of our research. It is apparent that being religious in the UK can make some young people feel out of place, whatever religious tradition they belong to. There was also a feeling from many of the young people who completed our questionnaire that people in their peer group did not necessarily understand their religious belief, believing there to be a high level of ignorance about religion.
Prior to the conference in Melbourne, I presented the same findings to Andrew’s student group undertaking the “Belief, Spirituality, and Religion,” module at the University of Nottingham. These students were extremely privileged in being the very first to hear any project findings and they engaged extremely well with the content. As well as presenting on the issue of religious difference, I also discussed friendship networks and the differences between those religious young people who surround themselves with non-religious friends and those whose friends were mainly religious too. It often seemed to be the case that even those whose friendships were mainly with those expressing no religious faith, young people still sourced friends with similar attitudes and values and this thus limited the extent to which tensions and conflicts could emerge.
We have also embarked on Stage 2 of our research – interviews – and we are busily filling our diaries with interview dates with young people across the country. However, we must also stress that Stage 1 of our research – our online questionnaire remains alive and active, and we are still very much seeking respondents from non-Christian backgrounds, so do pass on details of our study to anyone who may be eligible (Aged between 18 and 25, identifying with either Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Judaism or Christianity and living in the UK).
Many thanks and best wishes,
Sarah
January 2010
Our questionnaire has now been live for four months and currently over 200 young people have filled it in. A number of exciting themes are emerging, including the diversity of opinion regarding sexuality and sexual practice, the nature and context of young people’s involvement in their religious communities, the impact of feeling different as a young person in a largely secular society, as well as the people and things that influence religious young people – it is not necessarily TV and the Internet! The findings promise to be very interesting and we will keep you updated as the analysis unfolds. Your stories are always fascinating. They provide deep insight into how religion and sexuality intersect in contemporary culture. Thank you to all those who have already taken the time to fill in the questionnaire and if you haven’t yet contributed please do consider doing so.
However, we are finding it particularly difficult to recruit non-Christian participants. We continue to welcome the experiences of Christian participants, though we are now focusing on increasing the diversity of our research population. We would appreciate it if you could promote our project within and amongst your own networks, especially if you are affiliated with non-Christian young people. Your help in this matter is very much appreciated.
I am also very excited to be attending the Australian Association for the Study of Religions (AASR) annual conference in Melbourne this winter. I will be presenting a paper, based on the results of this project, on how religious young people negotiate their identities in a largely secular society. It will be our first conference presentation! We are very grateful to those who have participated in the project so far and have made this possible.
With best wishes,
Sarah
We are delighted to inform you that, since the online questionnaire went live on 1 May 2009, we have had a positive response. To date, nearly 100 people have completed the questionnaire. We are very grateful for your support indeed. Your stories, whatever they are, contribute significantly to our project. We hope that more people will complete the questionnaire in the months to come, perhaps you can recommend us to people you think might be interested in the project.
We have also received some positive and encouraging feedback, such as, ‘It is really an interesting project. I wish you all the best and luck’, ‘I just did the survey. It is very well done’, and ‘I think it is a good idea to investigate it’
Someone has also kindly e-mailed us to enquire about the aims of the research and how we defined ‘religion’. As she rightly pointed out, ‘religion’ could be defined so differently. This is exactly one of the reasons why we want to pursue this research. We do not prescribe how a person of religious faith should define and practice her/his religion, or her/his sexuality, for that matter. Our aim is to explore people’s lived experiences, and we expect much diversity in this respect. We hope this will generate findings that are rich and nuanced. Judging from the completed questionnaires, we are happy to report that a complex and layered picture is already emerging!
Another respondent also kindly took the time to share with us her/his feelings about the questionnaire, highlighting its limitation to collect in-depth data. We totally appreciate that different methods have different strengths and weaknesses. That’s why we decided to use a mixed-method approach, trusting that different methods complement each other’s strengths and limitations. The questionnaire allows us to reach a vast number of respondents under time and financial constraints. We do hope that the breadth of the data it collects enhances the depth of that collected by the other two methods.
If you are in the position to take part in the project but haven’t done so, we hope you will consider completing the questionnaire at least. We also hope that you would help publicise this exciting project. We have a standard publicity e-mail that we are happy to forward to you for distribution. Further, we also have publicity postcards and posters for distribution. Just give us a shout if you can help! Thank you!
Andrew
My name is Sarah-Jane Page and I am the newly recruited Research Associate for the Project.
We have been working hard behind the scenes to finalise the project questionnaire which is now available. This is your chance to take part in this exciting, innovative research project investigating religion, young people and sexuality.
You are eligible to take part if you are 18-25 and identify as a:
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Buddhist
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Hindu
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Jewish
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Muslim
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Sikh
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Christian
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or a combination of these
We are now starting to make contact with people who can publicise the questionnaire, so if you are a member of an organisation or a mailing list you may be able to put us in touch with other young people who would be interested in taking part. If so, please contact the research team and ask for some funky postcards and/or a colourful poster to display in your department.
It is really important that we access a wide variety of people - so even if you think your experience isn’t very interesting – it will be to us!!
We would love to know what you think of the questionnaire and welcome feedback about the project as a whole – whether this is about our website, or how you found filling in the questionnaire. We will also anonymously publish some of your comments in the Blog.
Best wishes,
Sarah
Thanks for coming to have a look at our website. We hope you have found it interesting, and perhaps will continue to visit on a regular basis? Maybe even consider taking part?
Though I am sure you have already been captivated by the beauty of the research team, we thought it would be good to give an initial update to what is happening 'behind the scenes'.
Andrew and I are currently in the process of laying the foundations for the project. We are meeting regularly and discussing how to approach the issues we want to explore, and drafting the questionnaire (which we hope many of you will end up seeing!). We are also venturing to the capital to meet with the Advisory Committee (descriptions and pictures also available!) who we hope to gain a number of valuable insights from.
Now for the cheeky part!
We are thinking about beginning to publicise the project. If you would like to take part please get in touch, and also forward the details to anyone you think may be interested. Or perhaps you are a member of a religious youth group, or keep a website or blog of your own? Maybe you are a religious leader or even just have a number of friends who you think might be interested in taking part. If so we would love to hear from you. Either Andrew, Sarah or I will be happy to provide you with publicity postcards to distribute.
Even if you are not able to help in this way we would love to know what you think of the site, the project and the issues!
Best wishes,
Michael
...PS
Please use the contact us page to get in touch or to provide us with your thoughts and feedback, some of which we shall publish anonymously here in the blog.