Healing and Harms
BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group Annual Conference 2026
29 June-1 July 2026
University of Nottingham, UK
About the Event
The SocRel committee are delighted to announce our 2026 annual conference, which will be held at the University of Nottingham, 29 June-1 July in the Monica Partridge building.
The 2026 conference theme is: Healing and Harms.
Speakers
The committee are pleased to announce Professor Anna Halafoff of Deakin University, Australia as a keynote speaker. Professor Halafoff’s work explores the rising significance of spirituality in Australia and explores spiritual harm and spiritual abuse in trauma-informed, interdisciplinary ways, generating solutions for addressing and preventing spiritual harms and abuses.
Call for Papers
This conference invites papers that explore these ostensibly opposing dynamics, highlighting, challenging and complexifying religion, non-religion and spirituality’s role(s) in both healing and harm, in their myriad forms, and across diverse contexts.
In the current climate of local, national and global religiously-inflected conflict, the committee are keen to create an environment conducive to carefully considering the place spirituality, religion and non-religion have, have had and might have in conflict and peace.
In an increasingly difficult climate for UK Higher Education, the conference will also extend to considering the ways in which the academy can be a site of both harm and healing, allyship and solidarity.
Recognising the weightiness of this year’s theme, the committee are working to ensure that appropriate and effective support will be in place in for all attendees as we explore these important topics.
We invite papers that address (but are not limited to) the relationship between spirituality(ies), religion(s), non-religion(s), and the following areas:
- Physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and responses to abuse
- Health and personal healing - physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and subjective
- LGBTQ+ identities, communities and intersectionality, exclusions and embraces
- Harming and healing the gendered, sexual(ised), bodily and embodied
- State violence, diasporic harm and sectarianism
- Social healing through peace-building, reconciliation and faith-based inclusion
- Healing and harm across the life-course
- Dominant beliefs, normative ontologies, and liberatory challenges
- Environmental healing and action, as well as harm and exploitation
- Race, ethnicity and racial justice
- Cultural harm and marginalisation - causes and responses
- Media and mediatized magnifications and interrogations of harms and healing
- Shifting contexts and changing landscapes – individual, social, physical and spiritual
- Experiences of disability, difference and (neuro-)divergence
- Methodological healing and harm, justice, and practices of exclusion and inclusion
- Social structures, institutions and class – collaborations and divisions
- Digital contexts, online environments, the post-human and the more-than-human
- Rituals, activisms and justice
- Political harm and resolution, not least in relation to populism, nativism and right-wing politics
We encourage submissions across a range of formats. In addition to traditional oral papers (of 20 minutes each, with an additional 10 minutes for questions), we welcome proposals for alternative formats such as:
- Roundtable and panel discussions
- Workshops
- Sessions that discuss published work (e.g. ‘author meets critic’)
We will also be running a stream specifically for papers by postgraduate researchers, early career researchers, and those presenting at a conference for the first time. There will be an option available on the submission form for those who wish to be considered for this stream, but those within this group who prefer to submit papers in the conventional way are welcome to do so.
Abstracts of 250 words and a short biographical note (not more than 100 words) should be submitted online no later than midday on 13 February 2026 (GMT). We will notify you of outcomes by 20 March 2026.
Registration Rates
After steadfastly keeping our conference prices fixed for several consecutive years, tickets for this year will be subject to a small increase in price (~5%). These updated prices nevertheless reflect significant subsidising by the study group. Registration is expected to open in early March 2026.
Funded Places
A number of funded places will still also be available, principally for postgraduate and early career colleagues, those on precarious contracts, and those without recourse to institutional funding. The criteria and application process will be detailed in the new year.
At this stage, we are also open to suggestions from our community as to additional keynote speakers, especially those from typically under-represented groups whose voices will elevate the conference as a space for equitable, diverse, inclusive dialogue. Please email Alex or Jennie.
We look forward to seeing you in June!
Warmest wishes,
Alex Arthur-Hastie and Jennie Riley
SocRel Events Officers