Dr. Jaeyeon Choe in Faculty of Management organised a panel session, ‘Geographies of religion and spirituality: pilgrimage beyond the ‘officially’ sacred’ at Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference in 2016 (https://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2016/09/04/geographies-of-religion-and-spirituality-at-royal-geographical-society-conference-london-2016/). Emerging from the panel papers, she successfully organised a special issue addressing the topic from cross-disciplinary perspectives in the Journal – “Tourism Geographies” https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtxg20/current
Dr. Jaeyeon Choe with Dr. Michael Di Giovine (Associate Professor of Anthropology, West Chester University, USA) published an introduction paper as a part of the special issue:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616688.2019.1625072?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=rtxg20
The papers in this special issue, Geographies of Religion and Spirituality: Pilgrimage beyond the ‘Officially Sacred,’ are placed in the context of a comprehensive theoretical overview of the role that the sacred plays in shaping, conducting, controlling, and contesting pilgrimage. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of travelers has demonstrated, pilgrimages need not necessarily be religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned. Rather, if pilgrimages are perceived as ‘hyper-meaningful’ by the practitioner, the authors in this special issue argue that a common denominator of all of these journeys is the perception of sacredness—a quality that is opposed to profane, everyday life. Separating the social category of ‘religion’ from the ‘sacred,’ these articles employ an interdisciplinary approach to theorize sacredness, its variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or condemned. Thus, the authors pay particular attention to the authorizing processes that religious and temporal power centers employ to either promote, co-opt, or stave off, such popular manifestations of devotion, focusing on three ways: through tradition, text or institutionalized norms. Referencing examples from across the globe, and linking them to the varied contributions in this special issue, this introduction complexifies the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, locals and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate, negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the sacred. Delving ‘beyond the officially sacred,’ this collective examination of pilgrimages, both well-established and new; religious and secular; authorized and not; the contributions to this special issue, as well as this Introduction, examines the interplay of a transcendent sacred for pilgrims and tourists so as to provide a blueprint for how work in the geography of religion and the fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism may move forward.
We hope all scholars enjoy the 8 papers, from 12 authors and 8 countries!
it was a wonderful opportunity to share the key observations and learning gained by my fellow UK delegates during the 2018 AUA Study Trip to Sweden.
During our conference presentation, my co-presenter Faith Marsh from BPP London and I gave the attendees time to explore at their tables their thoughts on if and how they could foresee implementing a Fika break into their daily patterns. It became very clear that everyone who attended unanimously agreed that whilst a daily break would be frown upon and ultimately impossible, the idea of a weekly or fortnightly staff break would be possible. We discussed how we could all take the initiative forward at our own campuses and given how many of us have been in contact since, we shall see how things progress along the Swedish way!
Presenting HSRI results at Nepal Dialogue UK
Nepal maternity care paper online yesterday
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.