Understanding Unbelief: Film and Audio
Films
Finding from Understanding Unbelief
THE RISE OF ATHEISM
This production from the University of Kent and KMTV released in June 2023 explores findings from the Understanding Unbelief programme and issues around atheism and non-religion in relation to education, the law and media.
Note: this is a recording of the launch event for the film and includes a panel discussion.
The presentation begins at 0:34 into the recording.
About the Understanding Unbelief programme
Programme introduction
Programme leaders Lois Lee and Jonathan Lanman introduce the purpose and scope of the Understanding Unbelief programme.
Cross-cultural research
In this film the UU Investigators outline the programme’s approach to cross-cultural research.
Interdisciplinary research
In this film the Investigators introduce the role of interdisciplinary research in the Understanding Unbelief programme.
Research in focus
Does religious unbelief exist?
Lois Lee provides an introduction to the study of unbelief.
Understanding Unbelief Across Cultures
Much of what we currently know about unbelief has come from research done in the Global North. A central feature of Understanding Unbelief was to improve insight into unbelief around the world. Here Karin van Nieukerk from Radboud University talks about her work in Egypt.
Measuring Unbelief
Azim Shariff from the University of British Columbia on using innovative quantitative methods to improve measurements of unbelief around the world.
Non-Religious childhoods
Anna Strhan and Rachel Shilitoe talk about their ethnographic project exploring non-religion with children in the UK.
Cross-cultural research
Anthropologist Ben Purzycki on cross-cultural approaches to gathering data on religious (non)commitment.
Minority Millennials and the Rise of “Religious Nones”
Dr. Aprilfaye Manalang and some of her students at Norfolk State University talk about religious disaffiliation among minority millennials in the USA.
Audio
Culture of Unbelief 1969
American theologian Harvey Cox speaks to journalist Rosie Dawson about the significance of the 1969 conference Culture of Unbelief, the first significant collaboration between the Vatican and secular academics around the study of atheism and other forms of ‘unbelief’.
‘Unbelievers’ an interview with photographer Aubrey Wade
Recorded at Understanding Unbelief’s Cultures of Unbelief conference in May 2019, Photographer Aubrey Wade talks to journalist Rosie Dawson about his year long project meeting and photographing unbelievers around the world.
Professor Lori Beaman on enchantment
Recorded at Understanding Unbelief’s Cultures of Unbelief conference in May 2019, Professor Lori Beaman from the University of Ottawa talks to journalist Rosie Dawson about reclaiming the notion of enchantment. Lori’s current work explores the ways in which enchantment, awe and wonder, for both non-religious and religious people, can translate into ethical responses to climate, nature and the world of non-human animals.
How can artificial intelligence help us understand unbelief?
Recorded at the 2019 Cultures of Unbelief and NSRN conference in Rome, F. LeRon Shults, Professor in the Department of Global Development and Social Planning at the University of Agder, Norway, and Scientific Director of the Center for Modeling Social Systems at NORCELS, tells Rosie Dawson what AI computer modelling can tell us about the future of Non-religion and unbelief.