Many colleagues in the School of Divinity have an interest in narrative. The network currently has the following members:
My main research interest is the role of stories in the construction, challenge, and communication of religious ideas in early India (c. 5th century BCE – 5th century CE), in Buddhist, Brahmanical Hindu and Jain traditions.
I am particularly interested in twentieth-century Catholic fiction and poetry, especially by Scottish writers, playwrights and poets. My research interests also include patterns of faith and scepticism in literature (and film) more broadly.
I am interested in the stories of individuals and societies and how this shapes their religious thinking. Related to this, my research focuses mainly on East Asian Christianity vis-a-vis the tumultuous events of the last century, which have brought upon challenging and creative theological formulations.
I am interested in the stories of individuals and of the stories [history] that societies tell about themselves. I am exploring the different ways in which those stories influence the writing of biography of individuals in the past. My main research interests lie in Scottish and British history of the sixteenth century.
I am interested in how history is narrated in a number of contexts and media. I have researched extensively on the ‘storying’ of the history of the Holocaust in museums. Currently I am working on Jewish migration to Scotland and am researching ways of narrating the biographies of migrants, their culture(s), and Jewish communities and Scottish places in the first half of the twentieth century.
My particular area of research interest lies in the influence of the Bible on Scottish, English and American literature from the nineteenth century until the present day. The parables of Jesus, and the parable of the Prodigal Son in particular, as fictive events which continue to resonate in the world of story, are of ongoing to fascination to me.
My research interests in relation to story exist primarily in two areas. The first looks to foster and develop research methods/methodologies that focus on the way that individuals and their stories can be used as primary research. This relates to how we obtain data through field work with individuals, and also how we interpret this data in a way that honours the individual and their particular narrative. The second aspect of story that I am interested in is the use of the self in research. Reflective practice and auto-ethnography as a means of doing academic research is of particular importance to my work.