Hello, I'm Andrew Davies. I direct the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public
Understanding of Religion in the Department of Theology and Religion at
the University of Birmingham and I'm also the course director for our MA
programme in Religion, Politics and Society, and it's my privilege today to talk you
through some of the options that we have in our department here at Birmingham to
study religion and politics. Why on earth would you want to talk about religion
and politics? Well, why wouldn't you? It's the ultimate after-dinner debate
isn't it? They used to say to us 'never talk about religion or politics in
polite society', but actually those two elements dominate our lives in so many
ways, probably in far more ways than we realise. There was a time when they told
us that religion was dying, that the world was secularising and that we
wouldn't need to worry about religion by the 2020s, but actually the events of the
last decades have shown that's certainly not the case, and after the
year that 2019 brought us in politics then who knows what the next 10 years or so
will bring. Religion and politics is one of the most exciting interdisciplinary
collaborations you could ever think about pursuing. Both of those disciplines
shape our lives and our attitudes and both of them create remarkable
opportunities for delivering transformative change in society. If we
can understand how those two disciplines work together and if we can bring our
minds to to bear on some of the great challenges that politics brings to
religion and vice versa then we can help change the world and make it a better
place, and also there are some great employability options in both spheres as
well. So if you want to study religion and politics, why would you want to study
it at Birmingham? Well, because we've got the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public
Understanding of Religion here. It's one of the world's leading centres for the
interdisciplinary study of religion and public life, religion and politics in
particular. We have a variety of faculty who specialise in the field including a
Professor of Religion and Politics, lecturers, senior lecturers and readers
who work in this sort of space. So that interdisciplinary collaboration around Religion
and politics and religion the social sciences is really what we specialise in.
We've got access to some of the great international networks in the European
Academy of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, and the International
Studies Association. We work with many global institutions, both universities,
NGOs and national governments, and that gives us great placement opportunities
which I'll talk about in a few minutes. And the other reason we think you should
think about going to Birmingham to study religion and politics is it's a really
flexible programme we have here. Our core content is delivered in quite small
classes but for some options you can be with larger groups and there's a wide
variety of modules that you can study. We have three programmes in the religion and
politics space. At undergraduate level, a BA Politics, Religion and Philosophy. At
doctoral level, and at research level, a PhD and an MA by Research which gives you
the opportunity to pursue extended individual research projects. But if
you're watching this video it's probably because you're mostly interested in our
MA Religion, Politics and Society programme. This programme is a two-year part-time or
one-year full-time degree. You have to take six modules including a compulsory
research methods module and two compulsory modules on religion and
global politics. The first one of them looks at methodologies and issues, things
like the secularisation, is that really happening across the world? Things like
the clash of civilisations hypothesis, does that make sense today, has
political science rejected it? And then in the second compulsory module we move
on to look at case studies of some of the important nations where politics is
intersecting with religion in today's world. So the USA, Israel, Iran,
Russia, Turkey, lots of other countries and contexts where religion and politics
are particularly significant partners. So on top of those three compulsory modules
there are three optional modules that you can do and most people take most of
these from elsewhere within the Department of Theology and Religion. It's
a very broad-based department, so we've got options for example in Holocaust
Studies, Islamic Studies, Contemporary Christianity, Sikh Studies,
Interreligious Relations, or you can always do a a special study, a piece of
shorter independent research to look into a particular topic that interests
you. But you can also do some of those optional modules from other departments
in the university as well, so for instance in philosophy you could do
Topics in Global Justice or Human Rights. There's a whole variety of modules in
Political Science and International Studies, including Diplomacy and
Statecraft, Terrorism and Political Violence, and you can do modules in
modern history as well, for instance Globalisation since 1945. So you can
really customize the MA Religion, Politics and Society to suit your own
interests and desires for professional pursuits and careers. The final part of
the MA Religion, Politics and Society is the dissertation and this programme offers
quite a variety of options here as well. Of course there's always the traditional
research dissertation that's a fifteen thousand word piece of independent
research, but we also have a few placement dissertation options. You have
to do a hundred hour placement, but you could then do a ten thousand word reflective
practice dissertation, or a ten thousand word policy report, or even a media
output, something like a film or a podcast or a radio show reflecting your
learning. And at the end of the programme, of course you're going to want to think
about what options it leaves you in terms of professional development and
your future career and there are lots of different routes that you can go into
having completed our MA. We've had candidates go to work for national or
local government, to go into policy development work, working for the third
sector, working for faith-based organisations, social policy work, social
entrepreneurship, and a variety of roles within equality and diversity, social
responsibility and Human Resources, all those kind of areas. This kind of
background is excellent preparation for any of those career pathways. So I hope
in the short video we've whetted your appetite a little bit and told you
enough about this programme to arouse your interest in it. If you want to know more
about it you can find an awful lot more about our programme on our website
birmingham.ac.uk /theology, or birmingham.ac.uk/Cadbury-Centre, and I'd be
really glad to hear from you if there's anything you want to know, more that you
want to ask me about. You can email me at the address on the screen and I'll be
very quick to respond to you. Thanks for listening and look forward to hearing
from you soon.