Lena Rose secures Levehulme Postdoctoral award at CSLS

We are delighted to announce that Lena Rose has been successful in attracting a Leverhulme Postdoctoral award which will be based at the Centre for Socio-legal Studies.

Lena’s project entitled 'Christianity on Trial: Asylum, Conversion, and the Modern Nation-State' will consider who determines what 'Christianity' is?

Christianity on Trial will examine the negotiation of ‘Christianity’ through the lens of asylum adjudications of claimants based on religious conversion. Among recent migrations to Europe, asylum claims on the basis of fear of religious persecution following a religious conversion are frequent. Secular judges have to assess the genuineness of the conversion, and risks of practising Christianity in the country of origin of the applicants. This study of case law and ethnographic fieldwork at courts in Germany, France, and the UK will explore the tensions between culture, religion, and power in the negotiation of what 'Christianity' is.