{"id":148,"date":"2014-10-02T09:51:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T09:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=148"},"modified":"2014-10-02T09:51:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T09:51:23","slug":"welcome-from-dr-graham-harvey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Welcome&#8217; from Dr Graham Harvey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/graham-harvey.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-149\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/graham-harvey.jpg\" alt=\"graham-harvey\" width=\"164\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>Welcoming new students is one of the greatest pleasures of being Head of Department. So, along with my colleagues in Religious Studies, I\u2019m pleased to welcome nearly 300 students now starting on A217 \u201cIntroducing religions\u201d and nearly 400 on A332 \u201cWhy is religion controversial?\u201d. Although the team the Open University\u2019s Milton Keynes campus doesn\u2019t often meet the undergraduate students for whom we\u2019ve prepared teaching and learning materials, we are honoured to know that so many are interested in studying with us. We don\u2019t know how many OU students studying at level 1 will continue with Religious Studies in later stages of their studies, but we\u2019re enthusiastic about our involvement with the various modules available there too (i.e. AA100 \u201cThe Arts past and present\u201d and A105 \u201c<em>Voices, texts and material culture\u201d). <\/em>We are equally pleased that we have students completing their Masters degrees with us and look forward to reading their dissertations and, we hope, discussing possible PhD projects with them. <em>This year, w<\/em>e also have four new students commencing research towards their PhDs. These are Aled Thomas researching \u201cThe Transition of Auditing from Psychiatric Practice to Religious Ritual: Social and Religious Developments in the Church of Scientology\u201d,Claire Wanless researching \u201cSecularisation and Religious Transmission: Communities of Practice, Networks\u00a0and the Rise of\u00a0Postmodern Religion\u201c, Theo Wildcroft researching \u201cYogic-animist ritual: witnessing emergent embodiment\u201d and Kasia Kowalska researching \u201cUniversalism and Particularism in Jewish Prayer in the Orthodox, Reform and Liberal Movement in the United Kingdom\u201d. They will join a community of existing PhD students at various stages of their research. We wish all our students every success in their studies with us.<\/p>\n<p>We are also celebrating the nomination of researchers within our team for\u00a0a Times Higher Education award under the the &#8220;Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year&#8221; category. You can read more about the Building on History: Religion in London project at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/boh\" >https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/boh<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcoming new students is one of the greatest pleasures of being Head of Department. So, along with my colleagues in Religious Studies, I\u2019m pleased to welcome nearly 300 students now starting on A217 \u201cIntroducing religions\u201d and nearly 400 on A332 \u201cWhy is religion controversial?\u201d. Although the team the Open University\u2019s Milton Keynes campus doesn\u2019t often [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}