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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

New Public Outreach Strategies for Research on Religious Controversies

Awarded: NOK 0.52 mill.

New Public Outreach Strategies for Research on Religious Controversies, was designed and headed by Mona Abdel-Fadil with the goal of creating new forms and formats of public outreach for three collaborating SAMKUL projects researching religious controversies:? - Engaging with Conflicts in Mediatized Religious Environments (CoMRel) (project host at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo) - Good Protestant, Bad Religion? Formatting Religion in Modern Society (GOBA) - Muslim Politics and Governance of Islam: Interactions of Structure and Culture in Multi-religious Europe (Muslim Politics). Key researchers involved are: Mona Abdel- Fadil, Helge Årsheim, Ragna Lillevik, Audun Toft and Erlend Hovdkinn, though other researchers have made valuable contributions too. Laugh or Die (May 4th 2017) With a highly innovative design the New Public Outreach Strategies for Research on Religious Controversies project set out to engage with new publics in novel forms. The flagship event Laugh or Die (Le eller Dø: verdens første arrangement om humor, frykt og religion på norsk) featured a unique combination of edgy, humoristic, popularized academic presentations about religion, fear, and humour ? and tailored on topic entertaining performances from select improvisers, satirists, and stand up comedians. The entire show is now online in edited YouTube episodes. Laugh or Die's entire webpage (https://le-eller-dø.no/) including the logo, animation, academic bios, presentation of the funding, and the registration form itself, was designed as an entirely satirical output; a highly unusual choice for an event originating from academia. The Laugh or Die promo-videos featuring Are Kalvø and Mona Abdel-Fadil were similarly playful and served as audience-teasers. Laugh or Die succeeded in reaching out to new audiences. Laugh or Die (and particularly the academic panel) was organized in collaboration with Bente Kalsnes (HIOA) and Steffen Krüger (IMK). Laugh or Die's: humorists, satirical website, promo-videos, and academic presentations blurred the lines between comedy and academic output. In effect, Laugh or Die is perhaps the most original, creative, and humorous of academic outputs funded by NFR to date. Exploring Public Outreach Options and Sensitivities On the 12th of January 2016, we held an experience-based internal seminar with Mina Hauge Nærland (Aftenposten) in order to discuss the challenges of participating in public debates when researching controversial topics of interest to the general public, and better equip researchers for public dissemination. The Researching Religious Controversies Conference 2016 The Researching Religious Controversies Conference was organized on the 31st of October-2nd of November, 2016 in collaboration with the Sigtuna Foundation and had a particular twist to it. A prerequisite for participation was that all presenters refashion their presentation into a blog post and publish it on the Religion: Going Public (RGP) blog in order to disseminate new research to the general public in a popularized, reader-friendly manner. Each presentation was assigned a respondent. In addition to regular academic presentations, we held four parallel blogging workshops in order to give a ?hands on? introduction to the art of blogging. Most of the blog posts that were contracted as a result of the Researching Religious Controversies conference have successfully been published, but a few are still under way. There were roughly 30 participants all in all, most of whom participated for the entire conference. The Religion: Going Public Blog The RGP editorial team is passionate about creating an blog that isn't simply a shorter version of a dreary academic article. The members of the Religion: Going Public editorial team fully embrace the idea that a blog is a specific genre which allows for the circulation of academic ideas about religion to wider publics. All the blog posts have been through an editorial process and have been commented on by two members of the editorial team before being published. This collaborative effort, improves the quality of the RGP blog and provides the readers with engaging and reader-friendly blog posts. In total the RGP editorial team has edited and published a total of 61 blog posts, including those penned by the team (10 in Norwegian, and 51 in English). In addition, RGP has commissioned and published 4 humoristic artistic illustrations, on the basis of a unique and somewhat experimental collaboration with the illustrator Øyvind Westgård. The RGP team puts a particular effort into the visual components of the blog including the careful selection of images that accompany each post. New Public Outreach Strategies for Research on Religious Controversies was both an innovative and ambitious project that has paved the way for far more entertaining ways of engaging with publics about research themes of general interest.

This application proposes new forms and formats of public outreach for three collaborating SAMKUL projects researching religious controversies: - Engaging with Conflicts in Mediatized Religious Environments (CoMRel) (project host) - Good Protestant, Bad Religion? Formatting Religion in Modern Society (GOBA) - Muslim Politics and Governance of Islam: Interactions of Structure and Culture in Multi-religious Europe. These projects share common challenges with regards to how to engage with publics and communicate research findings on issues regarding religion that may be considered sensitive, or even controversial, in the public sphere and in the life of many people. We aim to present research findings and engage new publics through the use of novel discussion forms, collaborations with artists, and by examining the interrelations between fear and humour, as expressed with regards to religious controversies. The proposal develops out of a relatively recent collaboration between the three SAMKUL projects with the goal of establishing the Religion: Going Public blog. This website is an ambitious effort beyond regular blogs, scheduled to be available online to the general public by the end of 2015. The new formats of public outreach will be developed and communicated in a series of three seminars. The first will take place in cooperation with the Sigtuna Foundaton in Sigtuna, Sweden, Oct/Nov 2016. The second is a researcher?s workshop at the University of Oslo early 2017. The third, an open Humour and Fear seminar at the House of Literature in Oslo is scheduled for late Spring 2017. Youth and teachers are considered particularly relevant target groups for this final seminar. In general, the target groups for the proposed seminar series are: researchers, stakeholders, and the wider public. The project is devised to leave permanent traces online, in the form of digital products (blogs, Sandbox discussions, YouTube entries) that can be accessed after the seminars.

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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell