The Center for the Study of Religion and Society within the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame is pleased to announce the launch of the Global Religion Research Initiative (GRRI), funded by the Templeton Religion Trust of Nassau, Bahamas.

The initiative is dedicated to supporting the study of religion in global perspective in order to address two weaknesses in contemporary scholarship, namely the neglect of religion as a subject of study in the social sciences and relative neglect of religions outside of the North Atlantic region.

The GRRI project has two main aims.

To broaden the current study of religion beyond the North American and European contexts to the global study of religion, allowing for a more thorough understanding of the role of religion in the lives of individuals and societies worldwide.

To reinvigorate an interest in religion as a viable topic of academic inquiry.

The GRRI seeks to realize these goals by providing scholars interested in pursuing questions related to the structure, practice, and influence of religions worldwide with resources to complete their work.

To match resources with talented scholars interested in studying religion, the GRRI will conduct four rounds of competitive funding. Applications for funding in our fourth round are due November 18, 2019. Selected proposals will be funded for the 2020 - 2021 academic year. Please note that we are not currently accepting applications for the postdoctoral fellowship, book leave fellowship, or curriculum development grant programs.

The six GRRI programs are open to scholars (both faculty and graduate students) with a wide range of research interests from social science disciplines. Please note that only the Postdoctoral Fellowship and International Collaboration Grant awards are open to scholars outside of North America.

Through the work sponsored by GRRI, the empirical study and theoretical understanding of global religion will be significantly advanced and better integrated into mainstream social science disciplines, as well as infused into undergraduate and graduate training programs via a more thorough body of knowledge about global religious diversity.

As a result, multiple academic disciplines will benefit from the enhanced empirical study of religion from a much wider perspective than is current practice, religion scholars will have a much better understanding about how religion outside of North America can be studied, and to what ends, and future scholars will be motivated to pursue the study of global religion in their own work.