Visiting Scholar

Charlotte Popham

Charlotte Popham

Charlotte Popham is a PhD candidate in Anthropology of Religion and Symbolism from the Instituto de Ciências Sociais at the University of Lisbon. She is part of the European Research Agency Chair on Imagination and Society, based at the University of Lisbon. Charlotte is a Durham University and St John’s College alumna holding a bachelor’s in Theology & Religion and a master’s in Religion & Society. During her time at Durham University Charlotte was the Disability Representative for Josephine Butler College and helped to found Durham University’s Theology Society.

Charlotte’s academic interests are interdisciplinary and sit between theology, anthropology and human geography. Her PhD research brings the spatial turn and imagination studies into a productive tension. The central research question that frames her PhD research is ‘how does space shape imagination and how does imagination shape space’. Durham Cathedral is taken as an ethnographic case study to investigate this complex question. She takes religion seriously considering faith from the perspective of believers and considers cathedrals not only as monuments of the past but living laboratories of imagination. Her PhD research touches on topics including heritage, identity, art and the role of religion and imagination in contemporary Britian.

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