Overview

Stuart Mathieson is a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, working on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project Fundamentalism as an Ulster phenomenon? Popular Protestantism, 1859–1939.

His primary research interest is the relationship between religion, science, and philosophy in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His doctoral thesis, ‘The Victoria Institute: A Case Study in the Relationship Between Science and Religion’, explored the sometimes turbulent but frequently accordant relationship between science and religion at an anti-Darwinian, conservative Christian philosophical society. His current research has two strands. The first investigates whether there was a specifically Irish contribution to fundamentalism, particularly with regards to engagement with science; the second examines how various religious groups reacted to the infamous 1925 Scopes ‘monkey trial’ in Tennessee.