Study of Religions Department

Dr David Robertson

Thursday 20 January 2022, 4-5pm online via MS Teams; 

For the MS Teams link, please contact Dr Jenny Butler j.butler@ucc.ie

David Robertson is the next speaker in the Study of Religions Research Seminar Series. Here is an abstract of the talk and the speaker's bio: “Gnosticism and the History of Religions” What if, instead of looking at Gnosticism as a historical religion or a perennial religious style, we instead look at it as a way of thinking about religion - a discourse on religious knowledge that changes over time, and responds to historical events? In this talk, David Robertson looks at the development of this especially malleable category, focusing on two themes. First, how do categories transform and mutate as they move between practitioners and academics, and between academic disciplines? And second, what do we do with these claims of religious insight and elite knowledge in the social-scientific study of religion?

David G. Robertson is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, co-founder of the Religious Studies Project, and co-editor of the journal Implicit Religion. His work focuses on claims of special knowledge in religions, conspiracy theories and beyond. He is the author of Gnosticism and the History of Religions (2021) and UFOs, the New Age and Conspiracy Theories: Millennial Conspiracism (2016), and co-editor of After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies (Equinox 2016) and the Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion (Brill 2018). Twitter: @d_g_robertson