Sub themes

Within this wide-ranging theme a number of research groups and clusters will explore key subthemes, some of which will be shared, or overlap, with other strategy themes.

Heroes and Leaders: Using role models to shape lives

Over the course of our lives we mould ourselves and our behaviour by imitating and reflecting on the models provided by others, especially those who are in prominent or authoritative positions, such as family members, leaders in the workplace or celebrities.

Absence of appropriate role models is believed to have a detrimental effect on development and acculturation, whereas the presence of positive and accessible role models should help us to cope with life's challenges.

This sub theme will explore the possibilities of interdisciplinary research that deepens our understanding of the importance and impact of role models in people's lives and life journeys, both in contemporary societies and in other historical settings. What kinds of people do individuals, social groups and cultures select as role models, and what kinds of factors govern their selection? What is the impact of role models on wellbeing and achievements? What makes a role model, and how do role-models influence behaviour and self-esteem (eg through story-tellling or stereotyping)?

We also aim to explore the identity processes that lie at the heart of these concerns: How far does one need to identify with a role model in order to be able to follow in their footsteps? How do people adapt the specific details of their role-models to apply them to their own lives? Ultimately, we aim to understand how positive role modelling can be best encouraged for positive social ends: for instance, can role models help to address underrepresentation among lower status social groups in occupational and other settings?

Place, Memory, and Identity

Areas for consideration under this sub theme include:

Sacred space and belief attached to place, secular counterparts for sacred space, and the making of identity.
The sites of childhood and the relationship of identity and origin;
Places as microcosmically significant.
The sensory and experiential qualities of place and the making of identity.
Specific regional and national identity in the UK, particularly in the developing archipelagic context (gradual devolution, economic recession, and now the re-emergence of a London-based Britishness following the Olympics).

Also emerging from interdisciplinary discussion is an interest in theorising and conceptualising place, and the different ways this is done in different disciplines.

Religious Identities and Encounters: Negotiating frontiers

Key questions for this sub theme include:

What is the nature of frontiers created by different religious identities?
In what way/s are they constructed? (eg rhetorically, physically, with socio-ethical norms and practices?)
To what extent are they permeable?

The idea is to get a more sophisticated picture than that which says encounter = conflict or even encounter = two different groups coming across one another. Sometimes frontiers of religious identity are created precisely between groups that are very similar.

Pain, Wellbeing and Identity

Chronic pain is common. And on the rise. Often it cannot be fully controlled by conventional medicine. Therefore many people have to live with it.

We are interested in how people live with chronic pain, how it shapes their sense of their identity, and in helping them flourish in spite of it.

Beliefs, Ethics and Activism

This cluster will explore possible intersections across the following subjects, themes and methods:

Geography,
ritual, behaviour,
religious bodily practices,
mapping narratives,
politics with a small p,
the nature of communities,
conflict and resolution,
a thing called faith,
the idea of home, and,
how grassroots groups strive for social justice.

There is a particular interest in exploring forms of protest.

Migration, Empires and Identities

Migration is a constant of human history, for centuries one of the most powerful demographic forces alongside fertility and mortality, and hence a powerful force in shaping identities and beliefs. Yet until relatively recently much of this mobility occurred not within nation states but between and within empire states; indeed, part of the raison d'être of empires - ancient, early modern and modern - was to facilitate or even compel certain types of mobility, while obstructing or preventing others. In some cases it is migration itself that may have propelled the creation of empire.

This sub theme will explore comparatively the patterns of mobility and migration across different continents and centuries that may have given rise to the emergence of new empires, the patterns of mobility and migration that were encouraged or enforced by these empires, and the patterns of mobility and migration that emerged during and after their demise - in each case we will further explore the forms of collective belonging (and associated values, ideals and beliefs) that both underpinned and arose from these movements of population, whether religious, ethnic, diasporic, cosmopolitan etc.