Death, Life and Laughter ─ Essays on Religion in Honour of Douglas Davies

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.

Dr 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. He has worked with Douglas Davies on several research projects and as a teaching colleague in Durham for the past ten years. With Douglas Davies, he has co-authored: Modern Christianity: Reviewing its Place in Britain Today (Reading: South Street Press, 2000) and Bishops, Wives and Children: Spiritual Capital Across the Generations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). He has also co-edited Congregational Studies in the UK: Christianity in a Post-Christian Context (with Karin Tusting and Linda Woodhead; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives (with Elisabeth Arweck, Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming) and is the author of Evangelical Identity and Contemporary Culture: A Congregational Study in Innovation (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). He is currently the principal investigator for Christianity and the University Experience in Contemporary England, the first nation-wide empirical study of religion among undergraduate students in England. Dr Martha Middlemiss LAc 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 amongst other project reports in one of the chapters in the volume Welfare and Religion in 21st Century Europe: Volume 1 Configuring the Connections (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010) as well as providing the empirical material for her Phd thesis (supervised by Douglas Davies) The In-between Church: A study of the Church of England's Role in Society through the Prism of Welfare (Uppsala: Acta Universitetis Upsaliensis, 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 on-line 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 editor for a volume (in Swedish) on Welfare and Religion.