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Call for Papers: STEMM and Belief in Diverse Contexts: Publics, Praxis, Policy and Pluralism

1 – 3 July, 2020 Stellenbosch, South Africa Call for Papers Please note: bursaries to support attendance are available, including (but not limited to) specific funds for early career researchers and researchers who are based in Africa. Organised by the International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society (IRNSSBS) in association with the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), Stellenbosch University, South Africa. In the last decade, there has been significant growth in social scientific and humanities research focusing on science, religion and belief in society. Greater attention is being paid to the varied ways in which perceptions of different aspects of STEMM subjects (science, technology, engineering, medicine, and mathematics) have been, or are, influenced by religious and non-religious belief, identity, community and conflict in different geographical, cultural and historical contexts. As this field of research has grown it has engaged in myth

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Do we still have faith in science? Progress, the Pope and belief in things we can’t see

By Stephen H. Jones ‘What has become clear to me in recent years is that the old dream of progress, which used to be assumed, is being replaced in popular culture by visions of disaster, ecological catastrophe in particular’. So said Robert Bellah, one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished scholars of religion, in 2008. His words have seemed apt following the coverage of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment.

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