Science, Technology, and Religion Unit

The Science, Technology, and Religion Unit is soliciting proposals on the following topics:

Science, Human Flourishing, and Human Nature

What role can science play in enhancing or diminishing human flourishing? What ideals of human flourishing are found in the human sciences and how do they overlap or contradict different religious traditions?

Science-Engaged Theology

What is science-engaged theology? How does one make scientific evidence tractable for religious claims? Is empirical data neutral, or is it always entangled with theological and philosophical assumptions? Is science-engaged theology something all religious traditions can undertake or is it restricted to particular traditions?

Religious consequences of technology at home and work

How will simulations (e.g., Meta/Facebook's vision for virtual reality) and other forms of telepresence change our experience of others and ourselves?

Teaching Science and Religion

What are best practices for teaching “science and religion”? What books and topics should be covered? How does one balance questions of theology versus religious studies approaches? What questions, paradigms, books unite (or should unite) the field?

Debates on decolonizing science

Do ‘religion’, ’theology’, and ‘spirituality’ play any role in these debates? Should they? What are the intellectual and institutional conditions within which recent decolonization debates can have a transformative impact on the study of science, technology, and religion?

Sociology of science, technology, and religion (Co-sponsored with Sociology of Religion Unit) 

We invite papers on vaccines (and vaccine skepticism), virology, climate science, surveillance, virtual ritual/worship, social/digital media, big data, etc.