fishers, surfers and casters

A conference can really make you think. It can make you think so much you can go crazy from the flashing of ideas and inspirations, coupled with being so tired from the concentration, the conversations, the late nights that you find it physically difficult to write everything down.

The conference ended 12 hours ago, so I’m up writing everything down as quickly as I can before I lose it all in transit.

The Graduate Research Committee at RMIT approved my thesis proposal but said it needed a lot of work, saying that I’m going too broad and asking too much of myself. So I’ve had enough inspiration to write for myself what I think is a good solution. It’s about blogging and bloggers so it’s about most of us out here, so if you’ve no life and like reading, go here.

Three of the world’s foremost thinkers of online religion, Heidi Campbell, Chris Helland and Mia Lövheim, gave a panel discussion yesterday on the future of research on religion online. It was great to hear as most of the background reading I’ve done on the subject has been rather descriptive, without much analysis with regard to social theory.

It’s been brilliant to have some time with them and talk about our respective research projects and goals. They were excited about what I’m doing down under and wanted me to keep in touch with them, which is truly gratifying – who knows, in a couple of years I could even be considered an expert in the field (really happyto be called a student).

The best feeling however, is spending time with these people who are a few steps ahead of me, and are willing watch, mentor and carry me through the project. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by supportive people. I never knew postgraduate study could be like this.

Knut Lundby and Birgit Hertzberg Kaare, from the University of Oslo, have followed young people involved in a Digital Faith project, where defining a genre for digital faith stories becomes an issue for young people and chruch organisations.

Anthony G Roman has done a study on spirituality in SMS communication in the Philippines. The average Filipino texts six times a day, resulting in over 1.5 million in the country.

Doris Jakobsh has been looking at Sikh web sites in Canada, and is proposing that a marginal group of Sikhs is presenting their form of religion as the mainstream. It raises issues of Internet use, production and religious authority.

Three students at the University of Edinburgh – Miljra Radovic, Chi-Keung Yam, Dwight Friesen – and one from the University of Nijmegen, Amsterdam, Jaap Timmer, have been following the presentation of religion in global cinema, looking at popular and independent film in Serbia, Hong Kong, Solomon Islands and India. Resistance and religious ideology, presentations of Christ, ancient connections to Israel and the the dark side of urbanisation all take place in these films.

At the end of the Fellows seminar, one of the coordinators suggested that those from America Latina, whose written English needs improvement, should be offered a summer school in English. An opportunity for the Fellows to spend some time in an English speaking country, but also for the rest of the world to see their wealth of knowledge, and have their work produced in English.

I totally agree.

But I have to say I had this feeling of being very white among the Fellows, and that was a good feeling. I was part of a global network where the North American/Western European/White world was a minority, and the feeling that that is how it should be. I was confronted with the idea that my own world was so cloistered, that my resources all come from a part of the world that is, in actuality, a very small part.

So maybe English shouldn’t matter so much. Maybe it should be up to us to get access to the wealth of knowledge that is happening in Latin America, not their task to market themselves to us.

I need Spanish lessons.