[CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS AS OF NOW] -- please reach jacquesparker@ucsb.edu with questions.

This CfP is for a panel on religious studies and related fields for the upcoming 2026 What is Research? conference at University of Oregon, Portland (23–25 April 2026).  

This panel is meant to discuss the variety of methodological and theoretical issues present today in the field of religious studies, anthropology or religion, history of religion, and other related fields (hereafter "religious studies"). This panel is meant to pull from a wide range of areas of research both in subject matter and in geographical location. Theoretical approaches to the categories of "religion," "sect," "cult," "spirituality," and other pertinent labels will be discussed. This panel may also seek to determine the reflexive impact of studying religion both on the practitioners studied and the wider society in which they live. 

Specific topics include (but are not limited to):

• Reflexivity of religious studies on its research subjects

• Translation issues

• Making the ineffable effable

• Studying secretive groups or institutions

• Studying non-institutional religious movements

• Critiquing and creating categories by religious studies scholars and their study subjects

• Circumstantial or state restrictions on research on religion

• The “creation” of various religions through reification by scholars or other means

• Transcultural exchange and communication

• Scholarly epistemological or ontological incompatibilities with religious subjects

• Study subject’s self-identity vs. scholarly conventional identities (“religious,” “spiritual,” etc.)

• Studying non-religious subjects through a religious studies lens

• Studying implicit religion/civil religion

• Complications in funding and access to resources for researchers (including students)

• Making religious studies accessible to non-academics or non-specialists

• Ethics of researching indigenous religions

• Ethics of ethnographic methods of researching religion

• Ethics of archival methods of researching religion

• Pedagogical issues in teaching religious studies (at any level of education)

• Being a scholar-activist

• Being a scholar-participant

• Ethics and potential uses of automative or language-generating technologies (“AI”)

• Collaborating with other fields outside of religious studies (including STEM fields)

• New areas of interest in religious studies

For more information on the conference itself, see this CfP and this webpage.

Graduate students, independent researchers, and early-career scholars are encouraged to submit an abstract for this panel. 

Please submit paper abstracts of 150–200 words long and a brief biography of yourself and co-authors (no more than 100 words per author). Only one submission is necessary for papers with multiple authors. You may submit or ask questions to Jacques Parker at jacquesparker@ucsb.edu. Please include “What is Research? 2026” in the subject line. Abstracts are due by 11:59pm Pacific (Los Angeles) Time, September 15, 2025. This gives enough me time for the submissions to be screened and selected before the panel’s own abstract submission is due on November 11, 2025. 

About author of this CfP: Jacques Parker is a graduate student in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They are interested in the variety of American epistemologies and religious expressions, including American new religious movements and anti-cultism, ghosts and ghost hunting, conspiracy theory, and media studies and religion. See this link for an up-to-date CV.