Dr Rosemary Hancock, Dr Enqi Weng, Dr Milad Milani

12:30 | Welcome & Acknowledgement of Country
12:40 | Presidential Address: Dr Milad Milani

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Chair: Doug Ezzy

“Suffering feels religious if you do it right”: Aiming for Pain in the Pro-Ana Movement.
Zoe Alderton

Spiritual Warfare, physical harm: An ethnographic analysis of the Vollmer exorcism.
Amy Christina Isham

In Nomine Satanas: Roman Catholicism, Satanic Panic, and the Dark Side of the Religious Imagination.
Bernard Dohert

He’s Not the Messiah, He’s a very Bogan Jesus.
Ray Radford

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Chair: Anna Halafoff

Religion and Non-Religion in the Stage 6 Syllabus: The Limitations of a Secular Paradigm for Teaching about the Rise of New Religious Expression.
Marley Krok

Gendering Kindness: Frances Levvy and the Bands of Mercy NSW.
Karen Pack

Secular Liturgies in Schools: A Case Study in Religious Pluralism.
Robert MacPherson

Contextualising spirituality to support resilience within health education during the pandemic: A research case study.
Alison Short

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Afternoon tea will be available in the break room (foyer)

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Chair: Karen Pack

Queering Practice: Transgender and Nonbinary Experiences of Religion and Spirituality.
Syaa Liesch

 Defining Doctrine to Discriminate: School Governance and LGBTQ+ Student Wellbeing in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, 2018-2023.
Elise Christian

Like Theology, Like Body: Anxiety Over Reproduction in Conservative Christian Critiques of Feminist and Queer Theology.
Liam Miller

Other Options for People Experiencing Sexual Difference.
Christopher Cat

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Chair: Vicki Lorrimar

The Divine Feminine: A tool of female empowerment or entrenchment and exclusion?
Mandy Scotney

The Colonial Legacy in Muslim Personal Law in Indian Subcontinent: Case Study Nafaqa (Maintenance of Wife)
Farjana Mahbuba 

‘When you have that many males in the room, they are gonna do most of the talking’ Gender Imbalance in atheist and humanist groups.
Katja Strehle

Not Just Sitting Still, Not Just Looking Pretty: Female Agency and Embedded Narrative Trajectories in the Mahābhārata
Suvarna Variyar

Faith based organizations as key partners in challenging violence against women: A critical study of the positive role of religion in addressing violence against women.
Fungai Chiroma

Zoom link: https://notredame-au.zoom.us/j/89307866535
Meeting ID: 893 0786 6535
Passcode: 540095

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Chair: David Newheiser

Reclaiming ‘Cult’: The Transformative Effect of Ex-Member Memoirs on the Study of New Religions.
Carole Cusack

Pagan Art.
Garry McSweeney 

The Evolution of Alchemical Psychology.
Robin Weston

Unruly, Wild and Unmentionable: Reflections on Creative Methods in the Study of Religion.
Geraldine Smith, Enqi Weng, and Rosie Shorter

Are the gods guilty? The relationship of local spiritual expertise and the Ghanaian legal system in the management of witchcraft-related violence.
Issah Wumbla

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Discourses of Religious Freedom in Australia: From diversity to the politics of belief.
Elenie Poulos

Chair: Tracy McEwan

Rev. Dr Elenie Poulos is an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University in Politics and International Relations. Her PhD (in Politics) was conferred in 2021 and examined the public discourses and politics of religious freedom in Australia. Her research on the intersection of religion and politics is interdisciplinary, drawing from politics, sociology of religion, critical studies in religion and discourse studies. She is especially interested in religious discourses in the public space. Elenie is a frequent commentator on religion and politics for radio and other news media.

Elenie is an ordained Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and was, for 15 years, the director of the Church’s national justice policy and advocacy unit. She has over 20 years’ experience working in public policy, advocacy and government relations in the not-for-profit sector, including 11 years as a Commissioner of the World Council of Churches’ advisory body on international affairs.

Elenie is a past Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford and in 2023 was invited to deliver the University Sermon at the University of Oxford.

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Penny Magee Lecture drinks reception

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Women’s Caucus Breakfast.
Chair: Tracy McEwan

Read more about the Women’s Caucus here

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A number of global studies have drawn attention to gender-based violence (GBV) in Christian religious traditions. This panel will bring together the research of four scholars in the study of religion to discuss their individual projects related to gender-based religious and spiritual harm in Catholicism, Pentecostalism and Jehovah Witnesses. Their shared research focus across the disciplines of sociology of religion, theology and anthropology brings together diverse perspectives, representing an important contribution to the study of GBV across different Christian traditions.

Chair: Rosie Shorter

The Abuse of Nuns in the Catholic Church: Will it ever emerge from the shadows?
Rocío Figueroa Alvear

Examining child sexual abuse in the Jehovah’s Witness: A comparative analysis of findings from two public inquiries, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (UK) and the Australian Royal Commission.
Kathleen McPhillips

Complaint as Testimony: Theologically-engaged research into women’s advocacy in and out of Pentecostal institutions.
Tanya Riches

The International Survey of Catholic Women (ISCW): Exploring respondents’ accounts of everyday spiritual abuse in Catholic settings.
Tracy McEwan

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Chair: Alda Balthrop-Lewis

How Christian Mystical Itineraries Can Help Us Think About the Climate Crisis: Catherine of Siena and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio in Dialogue.
Rachel Davies

Climate Fundamentalisms.
Rosemary Hancock

What might a 19 th century Australian Nature Mystic contribute to 21 st Century religion and spirituality?
Mary-Ann Casanova

First Nations Art, Possum Skin Cloaks, and Spirituality in Australia.
Jo Taylor

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Morning tea will be available in the break room (foyer)

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Since the turn of the twenty-first century, sociologists of religion have focused considerable attention on religious diversity and the rise of the non-religious, particularly in socalled Western societies. More recently, two parallel trends are increasingly observable in contemporary societies, and are attracting significant scholarly inquiry. They are the rise of interest in spirituality and naturalism. While spirituality has typically not been taken as seriously as religion, at least in political spheres or by academia, this is now changing as a result of growing recognition of First Nations cultures, as well as awareness of the nexus of spirituality with personal, social and planetary wellbeing. Moreover, there has also been significant media coverage and scholarship on risks posed by spiritual communities in recent years, including spiritual harms and conspirituality at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This panel examines these themes, focused on research on spirituality, wellbeing and relational naturalism in Australia.

Chair: Elenie Poulos

Right Story, Wrong Story: Narratives, Land and Creation
Tyson Yunkaporta

Spirituality and Planetary Wellbeing
Anna Halafoff, Andrew Singleton and Ruth Fitzpatrick

Returning to the Sacred Spring: Spa Cures and Hydrotherapy in Australia
Timothy Jones

‘Alone Australia’: Relational Naturalism and First Nations, Religious and Holistic Spirituality
Samantha Hauw and Anna Halafoff

Creation, Care and Climate: How Common Grace links Christian Spirituality and Climate Justice
Rosie Clare Shorter and Cristina Rocha

Zoom link: https://notredame-au.zoom.us/j/86715501827
Meeting ID: 867 1550 1827
Passcode: 293276

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Chair: Enqi Weng

Transnational Muslim Identities in an Era of Hypersecurity in Australia
Adam Possamai

Youth Engagement in Sustaining South Asian Diasporic Identities
Prabuddha Mukherjee

The Role of Islamic leaders in Muslim Integration to the Australian Society
Mehrnosh Lajevardi Fatemi

“Your faith […] like a relative who is tired of America”: Religion, race and ethnicity in contemporary Lebanese-Australian literature.
Ibrahim Abraham

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Lunch will be available in the break room (foyer)

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The occult science of the letters plays a major role in global philosophical and mystical heritage. Medieval Muslim and Jewish engagements with this science have been extensive, shaping various strands of philosophy and mysticism, including Sufism and Kabbalah. The great mystic of Andalusia, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), considered the science of letters the key to grasp the deep mathematical harmony of the cosmological, anthropological, physical, and metaphysical realms. His complex exposition of letters as building blocks of the universe presents a systematic parallel to the Galenic theory of medicine. The Zohar, on the other hand, embodies an enigmatic application of this science that digests a large body of Jewish mystical and occult writings. Do their approaches to letters have anything in common? In this panel, we will offer an interreligious perspective to letter mysticism by thinking Ibn Arabi and the Zohar in a comparative perspective. Ashkan Bahrani will introduce an ongoing collaborative research project that discovers an original work of Ibn Arabi on letter mysticism. Nejra Salihbegovic will present a theoretical and historical framework to study Ibn Arabi and the Zohar in a comparative lens. Aydogan Kars will apply this comparative framework to the study of particular Hebrew and Arabic letters. The panelists will collectively explore the possibilities of, and challenges for, framing letter mysticism as an interreligious phenomenon.

Chair: Milad Milani

Convenors: Ashkan Bahrani, Nejra Salihbegovic, Aydogan Kars

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Chair: Timothy Jones

Understanding Atheism as a Lived Identity: Why the Study of Religion Still Matters.
David Newheiser

Being Nonreligious
Doug Ezzy

Anarcho-primitivism, spirituality, and religion: Beyond a secular critique of civilization.
Albert Haig

Enchanted scientists: Cultivating modern selves between science and religion.
Ryan Williams

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Afternoon tea will be available in the break room (foyer)

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Chair: Bernard Doherty

The Physician and the Imam: The Portrayal of Ḥārith b. Kalde al-Thaqafī in Maḥbūb al-Qulūb.
Ali Hammoud

Unitarian-Universalism: a crisis or flourish?
Neville Buch

From Modern Greek Neopaganism to Aboriginal Australian Hierophanics and Back: Comparative Notes on the Experience of Indigeneity
Vassilios Adrahtas

Everyday Remembering Practices: Bhakti Forms of Devotional Recollection
Leena Taneja

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Chair: Adam Possamai

Religious identity and imagination of place: Placemaking and its impact on ethno-religious relations in post-war Sri Lanka.
Nadine Vanniasinkam

Jesus and the Revolution: Theologies of Solidarity from the Burmese Highlands to the American Heartland.
Michael Edwards

Buddhist Nationalism in Sri Lanka.
Neal Apel

Exploring 'Onlife' Hindutva: Reconstruction of Hindu Identity in India.
Anand Ranjan

Zoom link: https://notredame-au.zoom.us/j/82273045745
Meeting ID: 822 7304 5745
Passcode: 063799

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The Annual General Meeting of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion

Zoom link: https://notredame-au.zoom.us/j/88585931680
Meeting ID: 885 8593 1680
Passcode: 289662

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