Birth, death and the rituals that take us from one to the other tell us a lot about humanity and our quest to understand ourselves. It is cross-disciplinary analyses of the life course that have generated the most profound insights into religion and spirituality, challenging the concepts and methods we commonly use to understand these universal aspects of human experience. Douglas Davies' work is a rare example of this kind of scholarship, challenging the boundaries that separate theology from the social sciences and that divide academia from public life. This book serves as a tribute to Davies' work and a critical commentary on the questions that arise from it. Featuring essays by renowned international scholars, this book brings cutting-edge research into conversation with ongoing debates about disciplinary difference and the nature of scholarship.
Mathew Guest has published widely on contemporary British Evangelicalism and on Christianity in general, addressing such topics as the sociology of spirituality, creationist belief and the reproduction and transmission of religious identities. His recent research has focused on the status of religion within university contexts. He has worked with Douglas Davies on several research projects and as a teaching colleague in Durham for the past fifteen years. With Douglas Davies, he has co-authored Modern Christianity: Reviewing Its Place in Britain Today (2000) and Bishops, Wives and Children: Spiritual Capital across the Generations (2007). He has also co-edited Congregational Studies in the UK: Christianity in a Post-Christian Context (with Karin Tusting and Linda Woodhead; 2004), Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives (with Elisabeth Arweck; forthcoming), is the author of Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture: A Congregational Study in Innovation (2007) and co-author (with Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner) of Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (2013).
Martha Middlemiss Lé Mon has worked with Douglas Davies on the UK case studies within the framework of two European research projects. The first, 'Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective', resulted in, among other projects, reports in one of the chapters in the volume Welfare and Religion in 21st Century Europe: Volume 1 Configuring the Connections (2010). It also provided the empirical material for her PhD thesis (supervised by Douglas Davies), later published as The In-between Church: A Study of the Church of England's Role in Society through the Prism of Welfare (2009). From the second project, the European Commission-funded 'Welfare and Values in Europe: Transitions Related Religion, Minorities and Gender', a number of project reports were produced and published online, as well as various articles, including 'Care and Career: A Value Conflict with a Woman's Face, Beliefs and Values' (forthcoming). She is currently engaged in research into values and family life in Sweden and is editing a volume (in Swedish) on Welfare and Religion.
