Research seminar to celebrate Dr Stephen Gregg’s achievements

The Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research (CRTT) is celebrating the achievements of Dr Stephen Gregg through an online research seminar entitled ‘Relational Religious Identity, Autodoxy and Multipraxic Religion’.

Since coming to Wolverhampton, Stephen has published four books: ‘Engaging with Living Religion’ (2015), ‘Swami Vivekananda and Non-Hindu Traditions’ (2019), ‘The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion’ (2019) and ‘The Bloomsbury Handbook to Studying Christians’ (2020).

Recently, Stephen was elected President of the British Association for the Study of Religions for 2021-2024.

In the online seminar, Stephen will talk about his research, including reflections on new approaches to the study of religion that are foregrounded in his work.

He will also highlight the central theme of religious identity from his recent publications, arguing for a nuanced, relational, anti-textbook understanding of religious belonging and practice.

Building on his ongoing project ‘Transnational Guru Communities: Lived Religion and Multifaith Identity at Skanda Vale’, he will argue that previous research on ‘multi-faith’ identities has misrepresented the lived religion at Skanda Vale by being focused on the category of Hinduism. He argues for a multipraxic form of religion, focusing on embodied performance, rather than abstracted cosmology. In doing so, he hopes to suggest a new way of understanding the transmission of authority in a second-generation religious community.

This event is part of the CTTR’s Research Seminar Series. Click here to see a schedule of events for this semester.