- About Us
SSS is a centre for multi- and interdisciplinary research into secularity. Its work encompasses philosophical and political secularisms, as well as an array of so-called secular phenomena, be it atheist, non-theist and nonreligious populations, the de-sacralisation of literature and the arts, or any number of modern institutions that are designated as secular, including the university itself. SSS supports and showcases research from colleagues around UCL on these themes, and encourages research collaboration with national and international partners as well as across UCL. It provides a home for research projects approaching these topics from any disciplinary or cross-disciplinary perspective, including the John Templeton Foundation-funded project, The Scientific Study of Nonreligious Belief (SSNB). The SSS also runs seminars, lectures and other events and hosts visiting fellows working in these areas.
- People
Dr Lois Lee (lois.lee@ucl.ac.uk) is co-director of SSS, and a Research Associate at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, where she is principle investigator on the SSS research project, The Scientific Study of Nonreligious Belief (SSNB).
Dr Titus Hjelm (t.hjelm@ucl.ac.uk) is co-director of SSS and a Reader in Sociology at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
Dr Stephen Bullivant (stephen.bullivant@stmarys.ac.uk) is a Visiting Fellow in SSS at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St Mary's University, Twickenham.
- Research
The Scientific Study of Non-religious Belief
October 2015 - December 2016
This project is creating authoritative foundational materials to facilitate large-scale research mapping non-religious beliefs - that is, the religious, religious-like, and religious-related ideas and convictions of non-affiliates and atheists, relating to God(s) and other supernatural agents and to existential questions about the nature and meaning of life and death.
Little is known about how such beliefs are psychologically structured, how they manifest in the lives of non-religious people, and how pervasive and diverse they are across social and cultural environments. Yet religious 'nones' now count as the world's third largest 'religious' group - about 1.1 billion people worldwide (Pew Forum 2015a), and the flourishing of non-religious cultures such as 'New Atheism', of secularist activism, and of policy debates around non-religious inclusion have further fuelled interest in 'non-religion'.
This project addresses questions about how we should characterise non-religious beliefs as psychological and sociological phenomena; how diverse such beliefs are; how they vary across demographic dimensions and cultures; how they arise; and how they affect the lives of those who hold them. It facilitates new work into the factors predicting or giving rise to non-theism, 'apostasy', and anti-religious sentiment, and about the effects of non-religious belief for well-being, social cohesion and other personal and social outcomes.
The project is led by Dr Lois Lee at UCL. Dr Stephen Bullivant (St Mary's University Twickenham) and Dr Jonathan Lanman (Queens University Belfast) are co-leaders on the project, and Dr Miguel Farias (Coventry University) is project consultant. This research is funded by the John Templeton Foundation in collaboration with UCL, St Mary's University Twickenham, and Coventry University.
- Events
SSNB Lecture Series: Jewish atheists in foxholes? Phenomenologies of violence and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Dr Stacey Gutkowski (Kings College London)
Time: 6.00 pm, Wednesday 7 December 2016
Location: Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Main Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Information: Event information.
SSNB Symposium, 1-2 Dec 2016
The SSNB symposium presented a series of events exploring current and future knowledge of so-called 'unbelief' from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology, sociology, media, policy and law.
SSNB Roundtable: Who cares about unbelief?
Rosie Dawson (BBC Religion and Ethics), Professor Peter Edge (School of Law, Oxford Brookes) and Dr Richard Flory (Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California)
Time: 4.00 pm, Friday 2 December 2016
Location: Archaeology G6 Lecture Theatre, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
Information: Event information.
NSRN Annual Lecture 2016: Is Atheism a Religion?
Dr Miguel Farias (Coventry University), Professor Christopher French (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Dr Jonathan Lanman (Queen's University Belfast) and chaired by Dr Lois Lee (UCL)
Time: 6.00 pm, Friday 2 December 2016
Location: Archaeology G6 Lecture Theatre, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
Information: Event information.
SSNB Lecture Series: Evangelical and Tablighi Pioneers on Post-Atheist Frontiers
Dr Mathijs Pelkmans (LSE)
Time: 6.00 pm, Thursday 1 December 2016
Location: IAS Common Ground, Ground Floor, South Wing, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Information: Event information.
SSNB Lecture Series: What is a Human? The American Public's Views and the Impact on Human Rights
Professor John H. Evans (University of California)
Time: 6.00 pm, Wednesday 9 November, 2016
Location: Garwood Lecture Theatre, South Wing (1st Floor), Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Information: Event information.
SSNB Lecture Series: Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation and the Rise of the 'Nones'
Stephen Bullivant, Senior Lecturer, St Mary's University Twickenham, and UCL IAS Visiting Fellow
Time: 6.00 pm, Wednesday 28 September 2016
*CANCELLED*SSNB Lecture Series: Does demography doom the religiously unaffiliated to decline?
Dr Conrad Hackett, Pew Research Center
Time: 5.00 pm, Monday 12 September 2016
Location: Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Information and registration: For more information and to register, please click here.SSNB Lecture Series: Rethinking the 'Technological Sublime': Wright's Urban Planning and the Secular Uses of Religion
Courtney Bender, Professor of Religion at Columbia University
Time: 4.30 pm, Tuesday 26 July 2016
Location: Council Room, School of Public Policy, Rubin Building, 29-30 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9QU
Information and registration: This event is co-sponsored by RAPT (Religion and Political Theory Centre, UCL).
SSNB Lecture Series: Voices and Other Guiding Presences in the Emergence of Four Religious and Nonreligious Social Movements
Ann Taves, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara
Time: 3.30 pm, Monday 6 June 2016 (coffee will be served from 3pm)
Location: IAS Common Ground, Ground Floor, South Wing, Wilkins Building, UCL Gower Street, London WC1E 6BTInformation and registration: For more information and to register, please click here.
Religion and Public Justification Workshop
Time: 9.00 am - 4.30 pm, 28 January 2016 and 9.45 am - 4.30 pm, 29 January 2016
Location: IAS Common Ground, Ground Floor, South Wing, Wilkins Building, UCL Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Information and registration: This event is collaboration with RAPT (Religion and Political Theory Centre, UCL).
- Publications
Lois Lee (2016). Nonreligion. In The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion, edited by Michael Strausberg and Steven Engler. Oxford: OUP
Lois Lee (2016). Polar Opposites? Diversity and Dialogue among the Religious and Nonreligious. In Religion and Atheism: Across the Divide, edited by Tony Carroll and Richard Norman. London: Routledge.
Lois Lee and Stephen Bullivant (2016). The Oxford Dictionary of Atheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
François Guesnet, Cécile Laborde and Lois Lee, ed.s (2016) Negotiating Religion: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Titus Hjelm, ed. (2015) Is God Back? Reconsidering the New Visibility of Religion London: Bloomsbury
- Media
SSS research and researchers in the media:
University of Miami establishes chair for study of atheism, New York Times, 20 May 2016
People of no religion outnumber Christians in England and Wales - survey The Guardian, 23 May 2016
Exodus: churches lose 11 worshippers for every new member The Daily Telegraph, 23 May 2016
Atheists Outnumber Christians in England, Says Survey Time Magazine, 24 May 2016
Militant atheism is as extreme as any belief system, The Evening Standard, 25 May 2016
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