50 Years of the Study of Religion at Kent 1965-2015

The Department of Religious Studies published a special publication charting its development from 1965 through to the present day, picking out texts from the 1960s that defined the field and showing how the discipline has developed in each of its principal sub-areas, including: psychology of religion, philosophy of religion, sociology of religion.

It covered interdisciplinary studies on science and theology from 1965 by the late Professor Alec Whitehouse, the first Master of Eliot College and Professor of Theology, all the way up to current examinations of the relationship between religion and globalisation.

The publication was launched at the British Association for the Study of Religion Annual Conference in September 2015. In addition, the department established an annual lecture on the theme Religion and Public Life, to be delivered by a visiting speaker with an international profile.

Kent is one of the first British universities (alongside Lancaster and Stirling) to have established a department of Religious Studies, signalling a move from traditional departments of theology to an interdisciplinary examination of the subject.