Religion and difference in everyday life

These projects have utilised innovative and interdisciplinary research methods, including a combination of a large-N ethnographic survey and computer-led corpus linguistics to shed new light of religious pluralism in intimate, domestic and local contexts.

Researchers

Academic staff:

• Leslie Fesenmyer: transnational migration, kinship, belonging, and religion (especially Pentecostalism)
• Juliet Gilbert: youth studies, religion, insecure livelihoods, and aspects of popular culture
• Insa Nolte: Yoruba history, culture and politics

Recent selected publications

• 2022. Leslie Fesenmyer. Ambivalent belonging: Born-again Christians between Africa and Europe. Journal of Religion in Africa 52 (1-2): 119-145.
• 2019. Insa Nolte. Introduction: Learning to be Muslim in West Africa. Islamic engagements with diversity and difference. Islamic Africa 10 (1-2): 11-25.
• 2018. Leslie Fesenmyer, Pentecostal pastorhood as calling and career: migration, religion, and masculinity between Kenya and the United Kingdom  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24 (4): 749-746.
• 2018 Insa Nolte, Rebecca Jones, Clyde Ancarno, Inter-religious relations in Yorubaland, Nigeria: corpus methods and anthropological survey data
• 2017. Insa Nolte, Olukoya Ogen, Rebecca Jones, Beyond Religious Tolerance. Muslim, Christian & Traditionalist Encounters in an African Town

• 2016. Juliet Gilbert. The Heart as a Compass: Preaching Self-Worth and Success to Single Young Women in a Nigerian Pentecostal Church. Journal of Religion in Africa 45 (3-4): 307-333.

Projects

• Muslim Men, Christian Women: An African history of gender and coexistence
• Multi-religious Encounters in Urban Settings (MEUS)
• Knowing each other: Everyday religious encounters, social identities and tolerance in southwest Nigeria

Events

• The 2016 Cadbury Conference. Bodies of Text: Learning to be Muslim in West Africa

Find out more

• Research in African Studies and Anthropology
• Doctoral researchers
• Africa Talks seminars