Conflicts on campus: Universities as sites of interfaith encounter

In UK universities, interfaith engagement has great potential to tackle religion- or belief-related hostility and foster peaceful student relations. However, the quality of interfaith provision varies massively across the sector.

Broader ‘worldview’-related student unrest and activism is on the rise. Conflicts about the Prevent Duty, gender issues and proselytisation are live in universities, and student responses to unrest in the Middle East have gained significant media attention.

Despite this, there is little academic research into how students, particularly those for whom these debates raise religious questions, navigate these tensions. Universities need new approaches to relating across ideological and identity differences, and this project explores if and how interfaith might fill this gap.