Home » S4 Episode 5: What do religious and spiritual Australians think about modern medicine?

S4 Episode 5: What do religious and spiritual Australians think about modern medicine?

In the fifth episode of season four, Dr Anna Halafoff, an Associate Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Spirituality and Wellbeing (SWell) Research Network, SWELL, based at Deakin University in Melbourne, and Dr Tom Aechtner, Associate Professor at the University of Queensland where he researches Australian-specific sources of vaccine hesitancies around COVID-19 and other diseases and their relationship with religious beliefs, join Deborah Cohen to discuss their research. 

(This episode was recorded in September 2024)

 

This podcast is 37 minutes and 45 seconds long.

The keywords associated with this episode are:

  • Vaccine Hesitancy
  • Australian Public Health
  • Australian Religious Studies
  • Spirituality
  • Science Policy

You can learn more about the books mentioned by Drs Halafoff and Aechtner by clicking on the respective images below. To learn more about their research more generally please check out Anna’s and Tom’s INSBS Research Profiles.

The front cover of Dr Tom Aechtner's 2024 book Antivaccination and Vaccine Hesitancy The front cover of the 2024 book Religious Diversity in Australia, co-edited by Dr. Anna Halafoff.

Authors

  • Tom Aechtner is Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science in the School Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He is currently a Westpac Research Fellow, working on the project “Improving Vaccination Rates in Australia: Analysing Media, Religion and Policy.” This involves researching Australian-specific sources of vaccine hesitancies, including media persuasion and religious concerns, while considering how to positively deliver vaccination information.

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  • Anna Halafoff is Associate Professor in Sociology of Religion in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Australia. She is also a member of the Alfred Deakin Institute’s Science and Society Network, Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS) Consortium, and AVERT (Addressing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation to Terrorism) Research Network.

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The keywords associated with this article are:

  • Australia
  • Conspirituality
  • Covid vaccines
  • Covid-19
  • Podcast
  • Science policy
  • Season 4
  • Sociology of religion
  • Spirituality
  • Vaccine hesitancy
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