It is widely acknowledged among those who still care that academia in the UK is in very serious trouble, says Dr Michael Marten from the University of Stirling. The most infamous embodiment of the current malaise is a mechanism imposed upon universities by successive Westminster governments: a system of ‘research assessment’ driven by an ideology of neo-liberal commodification. Alternative perspectives and mechanisms are badly needed, he says.

Why it is that so few ‘secular’ scholars engage meaningfully with ‘religion’, wonders Michael Marten. Or to put it another way: why is it that so many religion scholars depend upon and practice disciplinary heterogeneity, whereas many of the scholars they use do not appear to engage substantially with what they write?

There is little if anything that is straightforward or indeed ‘natural’ about the body, says Alison Jasper. It is a cultural canvas constructed through metaphors and a physical one preyed on by the idea that ‘more surgery will make me better somehow’.

Scholars from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany are exploring the “globalisation” of Christian churches through a research project focusing on inter-regional dynamics and their effect on churches, particularly from the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to the development of the WCC Programme to Combat Racism and other social justice emphases through the 1970s. The project has culminated in an international conference on the theme at the Bossey Ecumenical Institute.