Photo of Professor Grace Davie

Professor Grace Davie

Research Interests

My concerns with the connections between religion and modernity date from the mid 1980s. The canvas on which I have worked has, however, steadily widened: from an initial engagement with faith in the inner cities of modern Britain (Ahern and Davie 1987), through a more general consideration of the religious life of Britain (Davie1994), to a concern with the patterns of religion in modern Europe (Davie 2000). The next step was to place Europe itself within a global context, but at this point the narrative takes a rather different turn. It is simply not the case that the patterns of religious activity discovered in Western Europe are those of the modern world more generally. Europe: the Exceptional Case (2002) deals with these issues by looking at Europe from the outside.

My current writing has developed this thinking in new ways. In the first instance, this has found expression in a book commissioned by Sage for their Millennium Series, which reflects on why the subject matter of the sociology of religion has developed in the way that it has. Why, in other words, have certain aspects of the research agenda received disproportionate attention and what are the consequences for sociological understanding? The text becomes in fact a critical appraisal of both content and method within the sociology of religion, underlining the importance of contextual factors for its development in different parts of the world (the comparative element is central). It was published in May 2007.
 
A further co-authored book (with Peter Berger and Effie Fokas) appeared in September 2008. It emerged initially from three meetings in Berlin concerned with European Secularity. Its eventual publication, coinciding with the American Presidential election in 2008 under the title Religious America, Secular Europe: A Theme and Variations (Ashgate 2008) was nothing if not timely. 
 
A third strand of research is rather different. It has developed out of my links with Swedish colleagues at the Uppsala University which have led in turn to a series of European wide collaborative projects on religion and welfare. The first of these,Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective, 2003-06, was funded by the Tercentenary Foundation of the Bank of Sweden; the second, Welfare and Values in Europe, 2006-09, was financed by the European Commission, under the Framework 6 programme. Both are central to the understanding of modern Europe and develop – both empirically and theoretically – ideas about inclusion and exclusion. WaVE is predicated on the assumption that values can best be understood through the ways that they are expressed in practice. Accordingly, WaVE aims to study values through the prism of welfare. Two co-edited books on welfare and religion in 21st century Europe are the fruit of these collaborations.
 
I was the co-director of both WREP and WaVE. The budget for each project was approximately £800,000. An interesting development of this work can be found in the establishment in Uppsala of a Linnaeus Centre of Excellence in Uppsala concerned with the Impact of Religion: Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy. I co-wrote much of this application together with my Swedish colleagues and am named in the application, both as a contributor and as a senior adviser. The funding from the Swedish Research Council is for 10 years at the rate of 5m SEK per annum (circa £400,000 pa).  I spent the spring semester of 2010 in Uppsala in order to support this work, which is now well-established as a major University program. See http://www.crs.uu.se/Impact_of_religion/ for more details. I returned for a number of shorter visits in 2011.
 

All of these ideas find expression in my current teaching, both undergraduate and graduate.

Recent research projects

I have been involved in the following research projects:

Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective, 2006-06 (WREP) is an eight nation comparative project directed by the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society in Uppsala, Sweden and funded by the Tercentenary Fund of the Bank of Sweden. I was the co-director of this project and was responsible (with Professor Nikos Kokosalakis at the Panteion University in Athens) for the Greek case study. The findings from this project are published by Ashgate (see list of publications).

Effie Fokas and Lina Molokotos Liederman were employed as research assistants on this project.

Welfare and Values in European Societies, 2006-09 (WAVE) grew out of WREP. It extends the earlier project in two ways: (a) by incorporating four case studies from post-communist Europe, and (b) by including minority as well as majority churches. It is funded by the Framework 6 programme of the European Commission ran officially from 2006-09.  I was the co-director of this project.

Lina Molokotos Liederman was employed to assist with this work.

Further details of both these rpojects can be found on http://www.crs.uu.se/Research/Concluded+projects/

Secularity as a European and International Phenomenon is a project run through the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs in Boston University. It is directed by Daniele Hervieu-Léger (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) and Grace Davie (University of Exeter). It explores the following question: why is Europe the most secularized continent? See http://www.bu.edu/cura/about/introduction.html for more details. A co-authored book from this project was published by Ashgate in 2008:

Berger, P., Davie, G and Fokas, E, Religious America, Secular Europe: A Theme and Variations.

A further project The Religious Factor in the Construction of Europe: Greece, Orthodoxy and the European Union, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, came to an end in November 2005. It was concerned primarily with the Identity Card issue in Greece and produced a series of academic articles and book chapters.

Lina Molokotos Liederman was the research assistant responsible for this work. The publications from this project are in her name.

Research Supervision

Given that I am now retired, I can no longer accept new post-graduate students in Exeter.

Research Students

Recent doctoral students

Marta Trzebiatowska, working on women in religious orders Poland. Completed November 2007.

Rebecca Catto, working on ‘reversed mission’ – i.e. mission from different parts of the developing world into Britain. Completed November 2008.

Gabriela Meier, working on models of bi-lingual education in the European Union and their implications for better integration. Completed July 2009.

Bruno Kahne, researching the 'new prophets' evoked by Max Weber in the final pages of The Protestant Ethic. Completed July 2009

Helen Gregory, working on 'slam poetry' in Britain and the United States. Completed September 2009.

Richard McCallum, researching the relationships between Evangelical Christians and Muslims in Britain. Completed May 2011.

 

Submitted and awaiting viva

Eduardo de Andrade Chemin, working on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Debbie Hay, working on tenant participation in housing projects.