Current projects
Self-Enhancement, ‘Biohacking’ and Spiritual Yearning (2024-2026)
With my colleague Stephen Bullivant, I am co-investigator of a Templeton-funded project on biohacking and spirituality. We are interested in whether people engage in biohacking practices (which we define broadly to include DIY body augmentation, technofuturism, health and wellness optimisation, and the use of spiritual technologies) for spiritual purposes. This research incorporates sociological methods and will contribute to a fuller understanding of both contemporary biohacking movements and the nature of spirituality beyond traditional religious contexts. This news article introduces some of the project’s questions and objectives.
Awe-some Spirituality: A Theological and Psychological Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Awe (2024-2026)
With colleagues Valerie Van Mulukom and Mari van Emmerik, I am co-investigator of a cross-disciplinary project investigating the role of awe in nonreligious spiritual yearning and meaning-making. We conceptualise awe as one possible “bridging concept” between the religious and the nonreligious: awe experiences and awe-seeking might well be indicative not only of spiritual yearning, but also integral to the meaning-making process itself for the nonreligious. Drawing on researchers from religious studies, theology, and psychology, the project thus promises new insights into awe and wonder as potential avenues for meaningful spirituality outside traditional religion.
Longtermism and Religious Belief: On Moral Concern for the Future (2023-2025)
This cross-training fellowship awarded through the University of St Thomas, Minnesota, has given me the opportunity to undertake postgraduate studies in psychology, and to conduct empirical research with the aid of a research psychologist mentor. My project concerns the relationships between religious belief and alternative worldviews such as longtermism on how we imagine and make moral decisions about the future.
Past projects
Biocultural Evolution and Theological Anthropology (2022-2024)
With colleagues Michael Burdett, Nathan Lyons and Megan Loumagne-Ulishney, I was co-investigator of a Templeton-funded project on biocultural evolution and theological anthropology. The project drew on the latest research on niche construction, gene-culture coevolution, and cultural evolution (including, but not limited to, work done under the banner of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis) to show the mutually constitutive interplay of biological and cultural processes in hominid evolution. Our main focus was how scientific insights in these areas might either challenge or extend theological understandings of the human, particularly in relation to aesthetics, morality and purpose.