Spirituality, Health and Healing

Type: Call for Papers
Date: April 22, 2016
Location: United Kingdom
Subject Fields: Health and Health Care, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology, Social Sciences
Spirituality, Health and Healing
1st Global Meeting
 
Call for Presentations 2016
 
Thursday 1st September – Saturday 3rd September 2016
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
 
Without the transcendent and transpersonal we can get sick, violent, and nihilistic, or hopeless and apathetic. We need something “bigger than we are” to be awed by and commit ourselves to in a new naturalistic, empirical, non-churchly sense.
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (1968), iii–iv.
 
How people are in the world can be fundamentally influenced by the balance that they experience between their physical and spiritual selves. Spiritual experience is fundamentally implicated in personal development and human aspirations. Many people consider that spirituality is central their sense of what it means to be a healthy human being.
 
The ‘Spirituality’ project is actively supported by people from across the globe who identify spirituality as a major aspect of development and a source of wellbeing, and who are interested to see how it continues to shape society and human beings. This project seeks to identify spirituality as a potent force in the modern world as an agent of change. Whilst it challenges the academy and health institutions to re-examine spirituality’s foundation and its legacy, it also urges governments and worldwide organisations, and the communities that they serve, to recognise that human beings are essentially spiritual beings. Whilst the project expects care that attends to people’s physical health in all kinds of settings it also suggests that this is health care at a very primary level. The future challenge is to make provision for those environments and practices that equally attend to both the physical and the spiritual concerns of the person.
 
Whilst the project continues to draw from traditional areas of religious scholarship such as the philosophy and history of religions, comparative religions, and mysticism, it has broadened its definition of what spirituality might be. Consequently, it now recognises that there is more than one lens through which spirituality might be viewed and articulated. Thus, the project has begun to encourage contemporary disciplines such as medicine, management, business, counselling, ecology, communication, performance and education, and others that might not immediately be associated with spirituality and its practice, to enter into exciting interdisciplinary dialogue.
 
In addition, it is hoped that the project will add to the scope of previous conferences and workshops by capturing and examining the myriad roles that spirituality plays in assisting individuals and groups of all types with their growthful aspirations
 
In this challenging new phase of the project’s life, whilst we will continue to encourage work that explores spiritual ideas, practices, and experiences, we encourage presentations that specifically identify areas in which spirituality is providing important insights into human health and development in diverse settings. We are hopeful that participants will bring examples and ideas of cutting edge practice that are well supported by existing and emerging theory.
 
Therefore, the project invites individuals and groups from all backgrounds, disciplines, professions, and vocations to come together in dialogical partnerships to explore the essential characteristics of this question and engage in activities that enhance current understanding, generate new ways of looking at ‘spirituality’, and inform future policies, theory and practice.
 
We encourage presentations that capture the essence of spirituality and its many manifestations in human health and healing. These can include auto-ethnographical and experiential accounts, case studies, papers, performance pieces, reports, works of art, cultural and artistic representations, and works-in-progress. Workshops that consider the meaning of spirituality, its philosophical traditions, and examine its scientific legitimacy from refreshingly new angles will also be encouraged.
 
Practitioners working in diverse fields such as NGO representatives and CEOs from health and spiritually related areas, educators, legal experts and civil servants working in policy, artists who engage with spirituality, health, and healing in their work, therapists, clergy, and life coaches who offer counselling in spiritual and health-related matters, and individuals who have an active academic, professional, or vocational passion to be agents of change and growth through spirituality, health, and healing are all invited to propose presentations and workshops on topics that might include (but are not limited to) the following themes:
 
     Conceptualizing spirituality in health and healing;
     The spiritual foundations of health and healing;
     Spiritual influences on medicine and the health sciences;
     Wellbeing and spiritual practices;
     Spirituality in elder care;
     Spirituality in chronic illness and disease;
     Liminality and stigmatisation in spirituality and health;
     Spirituality and addiction, health care, medicine, and nursing;
     Impact of spirituality in sceptical health settings;
   The future role of spirituality in patient-centred care and healing – case studies, personal and experiential accounts, and institutional facts;
     Key health and spiritual issues across the lifespan;
     Psycho-spiritual, psychological, psycho-social, and physical healing and growth;
     Use of spiritual technologies;
     Break-through research in spirituality and health;
    Identifying and supporting the spiritual needs of patients and professional helpers in health settings;
     Representations, expressions, and manifestations of spirituality in health and healing;
     Socio-cultural implications of spirituality and health;
     Health and the spiritual markers of cultural and gender identities;
     Development of personality as a process of spirit creation;
     Spirituality compassion, reconciliation, and healing;
     Controversial, ethical, and polarising issues when using spiritual approaches in health-promoting and medical settings;
     Spiritual and ecological balance in the health and life of human beings – practices and policies;
     Healing outcomes of spiritual pilgrimages;
     Spirituality, Gaia, and holistic health;
     Spirituality in business and management;
     Health, obsession, and spirituality;
     Health tourism
     When healing goes wrong – the impact of unhealthy spiritual practices.
 
Please note that presentations that deal with related themes will also be considered.
 
It is our aim that a number of these interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary dialogues will be ongoing and that they will ultimately develop into a series of related cross context research projects. It is also anticipated that these will support and encourage the establishment of useful collaborative networks, and the creation, presentation, and publication of original research. Through such richness and diversity it is expected that a body of knowledge and expertise will be established that serves both individuals and organisations.
 
 
 
Call for Cross-Over Presentations
The Spirituality, Health and Healing project will be meeting at the same time as projects on Letters and Conflict, Space and Place and another project on Food. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission “Crossover Submission”.
 
What to Send:
300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 22nd April 2016. All submissions will be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.
 
You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 6th May 2016.
If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 5th August 2016.
 
Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Spirituality, Health and Healing Abstract Submission
 
Organising Chairs:
 
This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.
 
A number of eBooks and paperback books have been published or are in press as a result of the work of the Health and the Spirituality collection of events. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.
 
Ethos
Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.