Joint research seminar of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and the Centre for Religion and Public Life with Dr Naomi Haynes (Edinburgh) on ‘Learning to Pray the Pentecostal Way’.
The Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) and the Centre for Religion and Public Life (CRPL) are excited to announce a joint research seminar with Dr Naomi Haynes, Chancellor’s Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh who will speak on the theme:
Learning to Pray the Pentecostal Way: Language and Personhood on the Zambian Copperbelt
Dr. Haynes says of her research: ‘I am a social anthropologist working at the intersection of religion and political economy. My research to date has examined Pentecostal Christianity in urban Zambia – a country that has made a constitutional declaration that it is a “Christian nation.” In part, my work addresses how various aspects of Pentecostalism, especially the prosperity or “health and wealth” gospel, shape exchange relationships and social life more generally. At the same time, I am also interested in the way that macro-economic factors, whether privatization or the Global Financial Crisis that struck during my PhD fieldwork in 2008 and 2009, impact those same social and relational forms. More broadly, my research is about cultural values – things like ambition, obligation, or charisma – religious economies, and the way that religion shapes people and social relationships.