Summary: The aim of this project is to recognize and examine the key scientific and religious arguments on the body related to gender and sexuality debates mobilized by religious and non-religious activists on social media platforms. More specifically, the project will identify profiles and narratives in which religious and non-religious beliefs intersect with the human body’s life science and biomedical knowledge within digital activists -advocates and organizations- in the Spanish and Mexican contexts.

The project is relevant because, within the fragmentation of spaces for the construction of meaning and the growing mobilization of religious identities in the public sphere, the COVID-19 pandemic context caused an explosion of digital activism. The creation and circulation of content in which the mixture of different fields of knowledge and symbolic universes proliferated on social media.

Furthermore, previous field research allowed us to identify the circulation of content between

activisms in Mexico and Spain linked to religious groups. Also, we identify an increasingly important use of scientific arguments within debates around the body and gender.

Additionally, there is important research regarding the intersections between religion, gender, and sexuality both in Spain and Mexico (Bárcenas & Delgado-Molina, 2021; Cornejo-Valle 2017;

Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo 2018; Ramírez Morales, 2021) that has not considered the use and

mobilization of science and scientific arguments in these public debates. In fact, studies that

incorporate the analysis of science and religion in Mexico from the social sciences are practically non-existent, although previous fieldwork shows us the increasing centrality of scientific discourses in the debates at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and religion.

Methodologically, the project is based on a digital ethnography in social networks and the analysis of discourses, images, and audiovisual content produced by religious and non-religious Mexican and Spanish advocates and organizations that deploy digital activism linked to moral visions, ethical regulations, and visions on gender and sexuality.

The main outputs will be a webinar, two articles, the presentation of a paper at an Ibero-American Conference, and the organization of a session on Science and Religion at the Conference of the Research Network of the Religious Phenomena in Mexico (RiFREM). The project seeks to open spaces for the study of the intersections between science, religion, gender, and sexuality as a new line of research and cooperation between Mexico and Spain, and in the future, in Ibero-America.