Dr Elena Kalmykova has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship for the project ‘Bridging Belief and Practice’, supervised by Professor Yujin Nagasawa.

The aim of the proposed research is to bridge the gap between theoretical and empirical studies of religion, which up till now developed separately, as the studies of beliefs and the studies of practices. The study of religious beliefs is undertaken by philosophers of religion, while the study of religious practices is undertaken by sociologists, anthropologists and other empirical researchers.

Elena Kalmykove

There is a lack of interaction between the two divisions and there have been limited investigations to study the link between religious beliefs and religious practices. To address this research gap, this project will build a conceptual and methodological bridge between the two areas, with the aim of advancing our knowledge as to how certain religious beliefs are related and connected to certain religious practices.

This two-year project has received funding of €195,455 from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, grant agreement No 660954. The project started in March 2016.

You can listen to Dr Kalmykova discuss her research in further detail in this video from the University’s YouTube channel.