Surveillance and Religion Network 4th Research Workshop, 9 April 2021

Call for Papers

Watching and being seen often features in biblical texts. God and angels are depicted as figures able to observe humans. People in the Bible engage in looking at others, sometimes spying on enemies, or keeping an eye out in particular for those who are in need.

Everyday life in the 21^st century takes place under the gaze of states and corporations who invest in surveillance technologies. The digital footprints we leave behind when shopping, searching, or using services are a valuable resource.

The aim of this research workshop is to explore how the Bible and 21^st century surveillance might be brought into critical conversation.

The Surveillance and Religion Network has held three previous workshops, funded then by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Core questions of this online workshop, the fourth in this series, are:

1. What do biblical texts about divine or angelic seeing disclose?
2. In what ways are these texts deployed (historically and currently) to legitimate or de-legitimate surveillance practices?
3. What are the forms of watching-over or looking out for others that feature in the Bible?
4. How does our experience of 21^st century surveillance shape our reading of biblical texts?

Participation in the workshop

The workshop takes place online on Friday 9 April 2021. There is no workshop registration fee.

There are two ways to participate in the workshop:

1. We invite biblical studies scholars to make a short (10 min) presentation based on a pre-submitted 3,000-word paper. Papers should focus on the core questions for the workshop but we welcome contributions that open up new areas.
2. We invite faith community practitioners to submit a brief prompt for discussion (not more than 300 words). This should set the scene for other participants to explore one or more of the core questions.

Next step

If you are a biblical studies scholar interesting in presenting a formal paper to the workshop please send a short proposal (not more than 300 words) to the workshop organiser, Dr Eric Stoddart (email) not later than 10 December 2020. If accepted, full papers will be required by 20 March 2021.

If you are a faith community practitioner interested in submitting a brief prompt for discussion please send this to Eric Stoddart also not later than 10 December 2020. We aim to inform you by 20 January 2021 if we are able to include this in the programme.