S3 Episode 4: STS and Religion in Conversation with Dr Thokozani Kamwendo, Dr Caroline McCalman, Dr Will Mason-Wilkes & Dr James Riley

In this episode James and Will welcome Dr Thokozani Kamwendo, post-doctoral researcher at Durham University, and Dr Caroline McCalman, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, for a roundtable discussion on the relationship between scholarship in Science & Belief and Science & Technology Studies (STS). Thoko is the editor of a collection exploring this relationship, with Caroline providing a single-authored and co-authored contribution. As well as hosting the podcast, both James and Will are scholars very much at the intersection of these disciplines, and are also contributing chapters to the volume. In a departure from the usual format, James and Will hand over the hosting duties (at least temporarily) to Thoko, who leads us through the motivation for the volume, before Caroline, James and Will outline their own contributions, before engaging in a more wide-ranging discussion of the value of this kind of inter-disciplinary project for both STS scholars and scholars of Science & Belief in Society.

(This episode was recorded in February 2023)

This podcast is 49 minutes and 54 seconds long.

The keywords associated with this episode are:

Science & Belief
Science & Religion
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Interdisciplinarity
Deficit Model
Normativity

To learn more about the contributors work, we recommend you check out:

Kamwendo, T. (2023) ‘Science And Technology Studies Meets Science And Religion’, ECLAS. 30th March. Available at: https://www.eclasproject.org/science-and-technology-studies-meets-science-and-religion/

Kamwendo, Z. T. (2020) ‘What I Learnt About How I Learnt About Behavioral Economists’, Engaging Science, Technology & Society, 6: 391-410. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.343

McCalman, C (in press) ‘A proper environmentalist wouldn’t do that’: discourses of alienation from the environmental periphery’, Social Movement Studies

McCalman, C. and Connelly, S. (2019) ‘Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism’, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 21(5): 549–562

Catto, R, Riley, J, Elsdon-Baker, F, Jones, SH & Leicht, C 2022, ‘Science, religion, and nonreligion: engaging subdisciplines to move further beyond mythbusting’, Acta Sociologica. https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993221116248

Mason-Wilkes, W. (2020), DIVINE DNA? “SECULAR” AND “RELIGIOUS” REPRESENTATIONS OF SCIENCE IN NONFICTION SCIENCE TELEVISION PROGRAMS. Zygon, 55: 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12574

Elsdon-Baker, F., & Mason-Wilkes, W. (2019). “The Sociological Study of Science and Religion in Context”. In S. Jones, T. Kaden and R. Catto (eds) Science, Belief and Society: International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion and the Public Understanding of Science. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. pp. 3-24. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529206968.ch001

Authors

Will Mason-Wilkes

Will received his PhD from Cardiff University in March 2018. His thesis, titled “Science as Religion: Science Communication and Elective Modernism”, investigated representations of science in non-fiction science television programmes, identifying a ‘religious’ portrayal of science in some of these programmes, and discussing the potential implications of this kind of representation for public understanding of science, and democracy, in the so-called ‘post-truth’ age. Will later worked as a Research Associate on the Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum (SRES1) project at Newman University, Birmingham.
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Caroline McCalman

Dr Caroline McCalman is a discourse analyst working at the intersection of the social sciences, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and religious studies. Having recently been awarded her PhD from the University of Sheffield (“Nuclear heresy: environmentalism as implicit religion), Caroline is currently working on a number of publications arising from her thesis while also searching for a suitable postdoctoral research position.
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James Riley

James Riley is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham, investigating public attitudes toward evolution. His PhD thesis explored Catholicism and evolution in England through investigating newspaper representations of papal statements on evolution and Catholic individuals’ perceptions of evolution using interviews.
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Dr. Thoko Kamwendo

Dr. Thoko Kamwendo is an interdisciplinary researcher in the fields of history and sociology. Thoko is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the “Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science” (ECLAS) project at St John’s College, Durham University.
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