It’s the start of a new season (semester?) of podcasts for the Religious Studies Project and we have a new responses editor in the form of me – Jonathan Tuckett!
You may remember me from back in the very early days of the podcasts when I interviewed Timothy Fitzgerald. Or, far more likely, from the numerous Christmas Specials where I’ve been an irritating contestant, intimidating host, and intimidated host!
Well, I’ve been upgraded from the Podcast’s comic relief to the far more serious role of editing the responses.
Over the years we’ve built up a brilliant group of respondents to our podcast interviews. As many of our regular respondents are getting up in the world of academia – finding their way out of the hinterland of postgraduate life – they are getting a little too busy to be able to offer responses these days. So this is a call to arms to any aspiring postgraduate student or early career scholar who can afford to spend a couple of hours writing a brief response to one of our podcasts interviews. It might not be REF-able, but this is a great opportunity to put your name out there and show the rest of academia what you’re capable of!
The editorial team are all great believers in the ethos of our sponsor organisations, the BASR and IAHR. The RSP is another forum in which to promote the academic study of religion, religions, Religion or “religion” (dare I add worldviews?) without pushing a confessional or apologetic agenda on our audience. This doesn’t mean we’re here to veto or control content which might question or test established ideas and the received wisdom of our venerable elders.
We want you to advance new ideas!
These ideas might be controversial or unpopular; trust me, I know a thing or two about this – how many established academics want to hear about video games? All we ask is that you respect the equality and diversity of views of all the RSP’s followers. The majority of the editing process that I put responses through is to just to make sure that your points, whatever they might be, are presented in a collegial and respectful manner. Our main aim is to present new and interesting material in an accessible, engaging and reliable manner.
A typical response is in the region of 1,000-1,500 words long. It can be a critique of the interview, a reflection on some/one of the themes, or a digression into your one work. (So long as it’s relevant! No conference bingo please). As an example, here’s one I wrote way back in the early days. The responses don’t necessarily need to refer to academic texts to make their point (but we expect proper references if they do). And you can be creative with the content – pictures and video clips are welcome. This is all about generating engagement and discussion!
If you are interested in writing responses for the RSP then all you need to do is drop me an email (j.d.tuckett@stir.ac.uk) to express your interest. In order to streamline the process it would also be great if you could list 3 or so areas of interest (e.g. Christianity, Gender, etc.) so that I can target you with podcasts more relevant to your particular field.
Thanks in advance, and feel free to email with any questions or suggestions of what we might do with the responses in the future!