Religious Studies Research Forum

The Queen's University Belfast Religious Studies Research Forum is an interdisciplinary grouping of scholars from across the University interested in exploring themes and issues relating to religion in culture and society. The Forum sponsors the annual McCosh lecture, delivered in recent years by Terry Eagleton (2015), Mona Siddiqui (2015), Marilynne Robinson (2016), Karen Armstrong (2017) Diarmaid MacCulloch (2018), Onora O'Neill (2019) and David Hempton (2020). It also organises an annual series of seminars in the University.
The Religious Studies Research Forum is chaired by Dr Andrew Holmes

The McCosh Lecture, originally the Annual Religious Studies Lecture, is named in honour of James McCosh (1811-1894) who was appointed to the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at Queen’s University in 1850 shortly after the establishment of the University.
In 1868 McCosh left Ireland to become President of Princeton University. His sphere of influence was extensive, not only as a leading moral philosopher and educationalist, but as a pioneer of modern psychology and as a prominent advocate for the reconciliation of evolution and religion.
Reflecting McCosh’s wide interests, the Lecture, delivered annually at Queen’s University Belfast, is in the field of Religious Studies broadly conceived. Previous lecturers include philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale University); historian Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame); climate scientist Mike Hulme (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, University of East Anglia); literary theorist Terry Eagleton (Universities of Lancaster, Galway and Notre Dame); Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies (University of Edinburgh); American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson; the public commentator on comparative religion, Karen Armstrong; the religious historian and Vice-President of the British Academy, Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch; Baroness Onora O’Neill, FBA, FRS, FMedSci, philosopher and former President of the British Academy and David Hempton (Dean Harvard Divinity School).
The McCosh Lecture for 2022 was given by Colin Kidd, Wardlaw Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. The Lecture, ‘Modern Paganism Revisted: Religion and the English Enlightenment’, on 25 May 2022.

The Forum hosts a series of seminars throughout the academic year to promote religious studies across the University. In recent years, it has welcomed many distinguished visitors to QUB, including the Oxford neurologist Irene Tracey, the University of York physicist Tom McLeish FRS, and the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.
The programme for 2022/23 will examine ‘Religion and the Modern University – Curriculum and Culture’. External speakers and colleagues from QUB will consider the place of religious studies and theology within the curriculum of the modern university as well as the attitude of undergraduate students to religion in general.
Seminar Series 2022/23
Semester One
13 October – Professor John Wolffe, The Open University
The Place of Religious Studies in the Modern Academy
Time and Location: 4.15pm – 27 University Square/01/003
24 November – Professor Mathew Guest, Durham University
Religion and the Student Experience in Britain
Time and Location: 4.15pm – 27 University Square/01/003
Semester Two
16 February – Professor Gladys Ganiel, QUB
Religion and the Student Experience in Northern Ireland
Time and Location: 4.15pm – 27 University Square/01/003
23 March – Professor David Fergusson, University of Cambridge
The Place of Theology in the Modern Academy
Time and Location: 4.15pm – 27 University Square/01/003
17 May – The McCosh Lecture – Professor David Livingstone, QUB
James McCosh and the Idea of a University
Time and Location: 2pm - Canada Room & Council Chamber