The purpose of the scholarships is to support research and study that assume a cultural understanding of media, similar to that developed in the work of the International Study Commission on Media, Religion and Culture. This approach sees media in general as providing a constantly changing web for cultural activity, and individual media as sites for cultural and sub-cultural negotiation and construction of meaning and identity in interaction with themselves and others. Religion and spirituality within this framework are seen, not as external entities located within a culture, but as cultural and sub-cultural interests and impulses that take shape through this constant negotiation and construction of meaning and identity within the political, social, economic, intellectual and technological structures of the web provided by the culture.

Applicants who are interested in discussing a potential area of research are invited to email the Executive Secretary of the Program or one of the members of the International Study Commission on Media Religion and Culture, whose locations and areas of research interest are listed in the Core Group link on the website of the Study Commission.

Applicants interested in exploring this theoretical framework further are referred to works such as

---Stewart Hoover and Knut Lundy (eds.), Rethinking media, religion and culture (Sage, 1997),

---Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clarks (eds.), Practising religion in the age of the media (Columbia University Press, 2002)

---Peter Horsfield, The mediated spirit (CDRom, published by the Commission for Mission, Uniting Church in Australia, Melbourne, 2002)

---Sophia Marriage and Jolyon Mitchell (eds.) Studies in Media, Religion and Culture (T&T Clark and Continuum - forthcoming)

---the website of the International Study Commission on Media Religion and Culture

---the website of the Symbolism, Media and the Lifecourse Project at http://www.Colorado.EDU/Journalism/MEDIALYF/

The following more specific research areas are presented as a guide, though other research topics that fall within the aims and general theoretical framework of the program will also be considered.

Religious/spiritual dimensions of media practice
Cultural characteristics of new media and how these are challenging frameworks and practices of "the religious" and "the spiritual" in social perception and practice.

Media and the established religious traditions
Historical or contemporary explorations of how cultural characteristics of media interact, shape or challenge the culture, practices and identity of religious traditions

Visual and material culture and the mediation of religion
Examinations of how mass-produced images and objects mediate religious belief in such practices as the use of images in teaching, devotion, pilgrimage or public worship.

Changes in the use of media as resources for engaging in religious and spiritual practice
How media are used in public and private settings by children and adults to create religious meanings. How authority, representation and community are redefined by appropriating media to personal uses.

Media and emergent social and religious movements
How have new religious movements made productive use of such media as video, radio, internet? Why have media been important to the leadership as well as the growing adherents of such groups? Do uses of media result in distinctive kinds of experience of belief and community among these groups?

Media, religion and cultural order
Explorations in media, religion and cultural order in broad cultural and theoretical movements such as the interfaces of modernity and post-modernity, mediation within post-colonial religious movements, reception theory and the traditional social functions of religion.

These topics are indicative, not definitive. The Fellowship Committee will be looking to applicants to contribute to intellectual and practical development of this inter-disciplinary field by proposing a specific research topic and indicating how it contributes and gives shape to this emerging area of intellectual endeavour.