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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.

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(Con)spirituality, Science and the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia: Material and Digital Practices

Summary: This project aims to investigate the nexus between (con)spirituality and science in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ward and Voas (2011) first coined the term ‘conspirituality’ to describe the merger of New Age spirituality and conspiracy theories. The project seeks to provide a deeper understanding of this phenomena, and the processes of radicalisation occurring within spiritual communities. It will also illuminate the internal diversities and complexities within these communities, that may indicate a lesser cohesion that the term ‘conspirituality’ implies. We therefore bracket the ‘con’ to signal the term’s potentially problematic nature. The project thereby investigates a wide spectrum of spiritual beliefs and practices that co-opt or critique scientific orthodoxy, including those that are non-controversial, those that may indeed be ‘cons’, and those that adhere to conspiracy theories. This project aims to interrogate the full spectrum of how Australian self-identified spiritual persons and groups engage with science in material

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A black and white photograph of Dr Anna Halafoff

S2 Episode 2: Science, (Con)spirituality and COVID-19 with Dr Anna Halafoff

New-age spirituality, wellness and alternative health practices have been cast in a new light as the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded. The relationship between these practices and established or mainstream science and public health has tended to be an uneasy one, and this unease has only increased during the pandemic, with online spiritualist and wellness communities providing fertile ground for the growth and spread of increasingly anti-establishment and conspiratorial ideas. To discuss these issues with James and Will is today’s guest, Dr Anna Halafoff, Associate Professor in Sociology at Deakin University, Melbourne, who explores these issues in the Australian context. Anna dissects the rise and development of ‘(con)spirituality’ online, the shifting political make-up of these communities, and how, beyond the pandemic, these communities and the individuals participating in them can be seen as responding to the social and economic conditions imposed by neoliberalism. (This episode was recorded in November 2021) This

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