Edward A. David

Thanks to the University of Oxford’s graduate access programme, UNIQ+, three interns will join me and Claire as research assistants on the ‘Understanding Generation Z’s Religious and Spiritual Role Models’ project. We are absolutely thrilled and are busy planning a packed research agenda for them … and for us.

Our main task is to produce a draft article manuscript that will present our analysis of story completion data collected from 100 Gen Z participants. Along the way, we’ll develop our qualitative research skills, our philosophical and theological acumen, and a variety of other skillsets needed for the academy.

I’m also pleased to say that we have an exciting lineup of events planned for the summer. We will present our initial analysis at Durham University’s Early Career and Postgraduate Conference, hosted by the Center for Catholic Studies.

We will also host two webinars during the summer, one on a holistic ethic of qualitative research (with Dr Jessica Pilgrim-Brown of the Universities of Bristol and Oxford) and another on the art of life-writing (with Dr Tony Gray of Words by Design, a publishing consultancy). Both events will be advertised to our story completion participants in the first instance, as a way to thank them for their contribution to our study and to build up a nascent research community dedicated to the study of exemplars.

The Gen Z study is already gaining attention both at home and abroad. Chaplains across the university have told me that young people don’t have religious role models amongst their friends and families. It appears that they come to faith with no social network in real life.

Our study will examine this phenomenon in a particular way — looking at the narratives that young people tell when asked to think about religious and spiritual role models.

To interrogate the data even more, we plan on hosting an Oxford workshop that will bring together young people, especially those who do not identify with organized religions, and leaders from different faith communities. Participants will comment on our analysis of the story completion data, and we hope this will facilitate a rich and generative discussion.

We also plan on hosting similar events abroad as part of future phases of the project. We would like to hit 1,000+ stories from participants across the globe. Though perhaps we might think even bigger. At any rate, we will complement our qualitative analysis with computationally assisted textual analysis. Exciting times ahead.

If you made it this far, please keep your eyes peeled for event announcements before long. And I’d like to invite you to share our study with young people, aged 18-27, in your networks. The study only takes twenty minutes or so to complete. Participants finish a short story, receive a certificate of participation, and get special invites to in-person and online events dedicated to their professional development.

Click on the image below to take part.