Religious Experience Research Centre

The RERC has an active group of researchers working on a range of projects.

Current Projects / Initiatives include:

• Spiritual Experience and COVID19

Supported by the Global Wales Mobility Fund a new research was initiated to research spiritual experiences and their impact on people during the pandemic. In collaboration with the Centre of Mind and Culture at the University of Boston, USA, online surveys were set up to collect stories about the impact of non-ordinary experiences. A first article was published recently about the silence around non-ordinary experiences. 

Prof Bettina Schmidt, Director of the Religious Experience Research Centre

Dr Kate Stockly, Centre of Mind and Culture, Boston University

• Spirituality and Health

Supported by INSPIRE the RERC began a new research project on Spirituality and Health which is linked to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. The project will study the place of spirituality in therapeutic context in the UK and Brazil. Our aim is to understand the place of spirituality within a therapeutic context. We want to examine the role of spirituality within psychotherapy, counselling and other medical contexts as well as the understanding of spirituality among therapists.

We circulated online surveys with a series of questions asking about experiences with spirituality in the therapeutic context, one in English and one in Portuguese. The essential question is how important spirituality (or religion) is in the workplace, either as a therapist or counsellor or as a student of psychology.

Prof Bettina Schmidt, Director of the Religious Experience Research Centre
Rev Dr Jeff Leonardi, Research Fellow at the Religious Experience Research Centre

•  Spiritual experience in the context of counselling and psychotherapy (Dr Jeff Leonardi)

Much of the research into spiritual experience tends to be focussed on individual accounts of personal experiences. The psychotherapeutic literature in general and of the Person-centred approach in particular, however, contains significant references to spiritual experiences in relational contexts, both one-to-one and small and large group. The present research consists in exploring such accounts and the implications of it for the framing of our understanding of spiritual experience.

• Health and Spirituality in Brazil – a study of alternative approach to wellbeing (Prof Bettina Schmidt)

The last decades have seen a shift in the understanding of health and wellbeing. After having been limited to “absence of disease” the concept of health is now broadened towards a more holistic understanding of wellness and health. However, there is still little attention on the impact of spirituality. This project will examine the ways how spirituality addresses important questions that have an impact on the quality of life. The focus is on alternative religious practices in Brazil.

• Spiritual Apprenticeship and Therapeutic Trajectories The Vale do Amanhecer in Europe and Brazil (Dr Emily Pierini)

Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in the Brazilian mediumistic religion Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn), this research addresses case studies of people learning the practice of spirit mediumship as a complementary part in their therapeutic process. It compares ethnographic cases from temples in Brazil with those in Europe, exploring the process of initiatory learning, and the way this process acts upon the cognitive, the bodily, and the biographical levels.

• Religiosity and Spirituality in Psychotherapy: An Intercultural Study Based on the Perception of Clinical Psychologists (Prof. Marta Helena de Freitas, Universidade Católica de Brasília/ Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre)

This project aims to compare research data from a project entitled "Religiosity and Spirituality in the Psychological Clinic: Perceptions of Psychotherapists," coordinated by Prof. de Freitas in a Brazilian context, with data and clinical material available at the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, UWTSD Lampeter. This intercultural study will both utilise data held in the Alister Hardy Centre and add new data to the Centre’s database.

• Extraordinary Experience, Consciousness, Religious Education and Ecology (Dr Jack Hunter)

Much of my research focusses on the intersections of anthropology, religious studies and parapsychology. In particular, I have researched the experiential dimensions of trance and physical mediumship through participant observation at a non-denominational Spiritualist lodge in Bristol. This research focussed on the role of extraordinary experiences in shaping the development of alternative models of self and consciousness amongst practitioners of spirit mediumship. My current research is examining the connections between extraordinary experience and engagement with landscape and ecology, especially in the context of the practice of Permaculture design. I am also exploring the connections between Religious Education (RE) and Religious Studies (RS) in secondary school and further education contexts, and the Anthropology of Religion at university level in an effort to build bridges between disciplines.