The Reflecting Together Project: Loneliness and isolation experienced by older people in South Tyneside
Stefanie Conradt has recently completed a fellowship undertaking a 12-month full time participatory research project in South Tyneside. Working together with the charity Churches Together South Tyneside (CTST), the team and Stefanie sought to understand how loneliness and isolation is experienced by the community’s older members. For that purpose, Stefanie worked with the staff and volunteers of two projects offered by CTST. By reflecting together on what is offered by the beneficiaries and local parishioners, the project sought to create a more connected and supportive environment, as well as new ways of engagement for CTST. By including different groups in this theological reflection process, this project has shared distinct voices relating to loneliness of older people from the deprived region of South Tyneside. The project’s goal has been to impact on the priorities and ways of working of the groups and services involved, so that the social and individual dimensions of isolation and loneliness are addressed. A short video that shares findings from the project is available on YouTube . There is a booklet for churches that accompanies this video, which can be downloaded here . The full project research report is also available to download for free from this link . For further details, the project website is available here .
Friendship, Faith, and Flourishing: How do friendship and faith interact and impact the wellbeing of practising ‘Millennial’ Christians in North East?
Ruth Perrin is building on her earlier William Leech Research Fund-sponsored research into the faith development of Millennial Christians in the region (published as: Changing Shape: The Faith Lives of Millennials, SCM 2020). Her new mixed-mode project will explore the intersection of friendship and faith in their current life stage, with a view to understanding how friendship influences spiritual wellbeing and impacts the ways in which 30-something Christians live out their beliefs across the Northeast. Ruth’s fellowship is based with St John’s College, Durham University, and is running part time from December 2023 to November 2025.
A Gift to the Church: Learnings from the faith lives of people living with addictions attending Recovery Church
Florence O’ Taylor is undertaking a project involving collaborative theological reflection with ‘Recovery Church’, a community of people living with addictions that gather for services that incorporate elements of the 12-Step programme. This research connects with the ‘Church at the Margins’ initiative within the Methodist Church in Britain, and builds on her doctoral thesis, which paid attention to the lived experiences of women living with addiction in order to develop an empirically grounded political theology of addiction. Her interest in addiction grew out of working for several years in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre alongside running a Christian ministry with women facing multiple forms of marginalisation. This project is running for two years part time from October 2024 to September 2026.
Recovery from Moral Injury across the North East of England and Beyond: Researching and refining the theological tools available to chaplains
Brian Powers is leading this project that is asking important questions about the tools that chaplains, clergy and religious personnel can use to attend to moral injury in a UK context, particularly the North East of England. Specifically, it is exploring what are the resources – the rituals, scriptural traditions, theological concepts, frameworks of meaning and experiences – which a chaplain or clergy member may employ in order to engage with moral injury in British military veterans that will help facilitate recovery. The project involves a series of interviews and will result in a set of resources for chaplains, clergy and other practitioners, with the ultimate aim of improving mental health for morally-injured people in the UK. It runs for 12 months full time from September 2025 to August 2026, based at the International Centre for Moral Injury – Durham University .