Will using surveillance make good religion better and bad religion worse?
Monday 20th March 2017; 7.30pm.
Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2JL
Cost: Free, but booking essential. Tickets available at: http://surrelig_edinburgh.eventbrite.co.uk
Speaker: Dr Eric Stoddart |Coordinator, Surveillance & Religion Network | Associate Director, Centre for the Study of Religion & Politics | School of Divinity | University of St Andrews
This public lecture is aimed at a general audience of people from any religious faith tradition, or none.
Eric Stoddart has been teaching and writing about digital, and specifically surveillance, technologies, for the past 10 years. In this talk Dr Stoddart will explore the ways that religious groups draw upon surveillance technologies such as congregational data management, self-monitoring of spiritual disciplines, or CCTV deployed upon (and within) religious buildings. He will consider how these technologies shape their users and what that might mean for faith communities. He will suggest that religious groups need to find resources from within their respective traditions in order to employ surveillance in ways that are life-affirming and not, unintentionally, counter to human flourishing.
A question and answer session will follow his 40 minute talk which begins at 7.30pm.
This event is an activity of the Surveillance & Religion Network, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
The event will be audio-recorded for later distribution.