IAFOR > The European Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy (ECERP) > ECERP2019 Overview

ECERP2019 Overview

The Final Call for Papers deadline has passed.

To register as an Audience member, please visit the Audience Registration page. Thank you.

Conference Theme: "Value and Values"

July 5-6, 2019 | The Jurys Inn Brighton Waterfront, Brighton, UK

The conference theme, Value and Values, refers to two of the fundamental questions of human enquiry – why and how we do what we do. Focussing on them takes us back to the basics of academic enquiry. The focus on the Value of our area of study invokes questions of why our field is important for us, for society, for humanity; asking us to consider why we research, teach, and engage with other research and researchers in our area; and what the benefit of our work might be, to ourselves, to society, to the world.

Focusing on values, on the other hand, addresses our deeply held beliefs and integrity, and suggests our intentions, how we approach our work, and demands that the process of our enquiry be as important as the product. Our core values may be universal, but are coloured by our social, cultural, religious, political and personal contexts.

How can the study of ethics, religion and philosophy, as well as those of psychology and the behavioral sciences, inform each other, inform other fields, and inform our lives, from the way we lead our individual lives, to the ways in which governments engage with their citizens, and with those from other countries and regions?

In a world which is seeing a rise in authoritarianism, nationalism, and populism, this conference asks us to consider “value and values”, inviting scholars from around the world to come together and engage in challenging, rigorous debate across the lines and borders of religion, creed and nation, and we warmly encourage you to come to Brighton in 2019!

ECERP2019 will be held alongside The European Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2019 (ECP2019). Registration for either conference will allow delegates to attend sessions in the other.

– The ECERP2019 Organising Committee

Anne Boddington, Kingston University, UK
Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
David Putwain, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Frank S. Ravitch, Michigan State University College of Law, USA
Dexter Da Silva, Keisen University, Japan

Click to download as a PDF

Speakers

  • Amy Szarkowski
    Amy Szarkowski
    Harvard Medical School, USA
  • Stephen E. Gregg
    Stephen E. Gregg
    University of Wolverhampton, UK
  • Bas Verplanken
    Bas Verplanken
    University of Bath, UK

Back to Top

Programme

  • Practise What You Preach? Views on Values from Social Psychology
    Practise What You Preach? Views on Values from Social Psychology
    Keynote Presentation: Bas Verplanken
  • Difficult Conversations: Respecting Values & Changing Behaviors
    Difficult Conversations: Respecting Values & Changing Behaviors
    Keynote Presentation: Amy Szarkowski
  • Valuing Religion
    Valuing Religion
    Keynote Presentation: Stephen E. Gregg

Back to Top

Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    Kingston University, UK
  • David Putwain
    David Putwain
    Liverpool John Moores University, UK
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Dexter Da Silva
    Dexter Da Silva
    Keisen University, Japan
  • Frank S. Ravitch
    Frank S. Ravitch
    Michigan State University College of Law, USA

Back to Top

ECP/ECERP2019 Review Committee

  • Dr Happiness Igbo, Benue State University, Nigeria
  • Dr Joy Tungol, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
  • Dr Monica Sharma, The IIS University Jaipur, India
  • Dr Samuel Chng, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
  • Dr Talat Islam, University of The Punjab, Pakistan
  • Dr Daniel Dei, North-West University, South Africa
  • Dr Maila Dinia Husni Rahiem, Universitas Islam Negeri, Indonesia
  • Dr Syed Alam, Fatima Jinnah Women University Rawalpindi, Pakistan

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the ECERP2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

Back to Top

IAFOR Research Centre (IRC) – “Innovation and Value Initiative”

The IAFOR Research Centre (IRC) is housed within Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), and in June 2018 the IRC began an ambitious new “Innovation and Value Initiative”. Officially launched at the United Nations in a special UN-IAFOR Collaborative Session, the initiative seeks to bring together the best in interdisciplinary research around the concept of value, on how value can be recognised, and measured, and how this can help us address issues and solve problems, from the local to the global.

Learn more about the Innovation and Value Initiative

Back to Top

Amy Szarkowski
Harvard Medical School, USA

Biography

Amy Szarkowski, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in working with children with disabilities and their families. She provides direct services to children and guidance to staff members as the Clinical Director at Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf. Dr Szarkowski is involved in training medical professionals and fostering disability advocacy through her role as Core Faculty for the Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) program, through the Department of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Academically, Dr Szarkowski holds appointments as an adjunct Associate Professor at Gallaudet University and as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr Szarkowski is honored to serve on the International Academic Advisory Board for IAFOR.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Difficult Conversations: Respecting Values & Changing Behaviors
Stephen E. Gregg
University of Wolverhampton, UK

Biography

Dr Stephen E. Gregg is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, and the Hon. Secretary of the British Association for the Study of Religions. His research interests are focused on Religious Identity, Contemporary Religion, Minority Religions, and Religion and Comedy/Performance. His recent books include Swami Vivekananda and Non-Hindu Traditions (Routledge, 2019), The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Approaches in the Study of Religion (Equinox, 2019), The Bloomsbury Handbook to Studying Christians (Bloomsbury, 2019), Engaging with Living Religion (Routledge, 2015) and Jesus Beyond Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Stephen received his BA and PhD from the University of Wales, where he was subsequently appointed Lecturer in Religious Studies. He was then appointed as Fellow in the Study of Religion at Liverpool Hope University and is now Senior Lecturer at Wolverhampton, the multicultural heart of the UK. He has delivered invited papers at universities in India, Turkey, Australia, the USA, and across the UK and Europe. In 2013 Stephen was the lead coordinator for the European Association for the Study of Religions and the International Association for the History of Religions Conference in Liverpool, UK.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Valuing Religion

Previous ECERP Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2017) | When the Pope is not a Catholic: Complicating Religious Identity in the Twenty-First Century
Bas Verplanken
University of Bath, UK

Biography

Professor Bas Verplanken graduated and obtained his PhD at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, where he worked as a Research Fellow and Lecturer from 1980-1990. From 1990-1998 he was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Nijmegen. From 1998 to 2006 he was a professor at the University of Tromsø, Norway. In 2006 he joined the University of Bath, where he was Head of Department of Psychology from 2010-2016. His research interests are in attitude-behaviour relations and change, applied in the domains of environmental, health, and consumer psychology. He has developed a special interest in habits. He published on a variety of topics, including risk perception, environmental concern, unhealthy eating, travel mode choice, values, self-esteem, body image, worrying, mindfulness, impulsive buying, behaviour change, and sustainable lifestyles. He served as an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and Psychology and Health.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Practise What You Preach? Views on Values from Social Psychology
Practise What You Preach? Views on Values from Social Psychology
Keynote Presentation: Bas Verplanken

In this talk I will take a social psychology perspective on values. I will first address how values are defined and structured. The main part of the talk will focus on the question how values relate to behaviour. We are all too familiar with a gap between our values and our behaviours: we don't always practise what we preach. I will discuss a range of viewpoints and factors which may explain why that is the case, and conditions under which behaviours are more likely to be in line with our values. This brings us to the relationship between values and the self, what it means to adhere to a value, and how this may be important in making behaviour change interventions more effective.

Read presenter biographies.

Difficult Conversations: Respecting Values & Changing Behaviors
Keynote Presentation: Amy Szarkowski

Regardless of our respective professions, or the dynamics involved in our interactions with the networks of family, friends and community that comprise our personal lives, at some point, we all must engage in difficult conversations. Delivering ‘bad news,’ arguing an alternative approach to addressing a problem, or engaging in conversation with people who are highly emotional can certainly be challenging. For many, these situations are, at a minimum, uncomfortable; at their more extreme, these situations may be perceived as dreadful. However, identifying and considering the values of others with whom you are communicating can be a crucial step toward reaching a resolution. Incorporating lessons from fields as diverse as medicine, business, education, communication sciences, and psychology, Dr Szarkowski will distill the evidence into powerful ‘take home messages.’ Audience members will benefit from learning how to better engage in difficult conversations in order to obtain their desired results.

Read presenter biographies.

Valuing Religion
Keynote Presentation: Stephen E. Gregg

What place does religion have in 21st century societies, and why should we study it academically, rather than confessionally? Why are religious views protected under law, and what are the limits of free speech critiquing or attacking religion? How fit-for-purpose are educational approaches to religions, and why is it important to be “religiously literate” in the modern world?

In this paper, I will use new approaches to the academic Study of Religion to analyse and explore the multi-faceted experiences of religious people, critics of religion, and scholars of religion as they each test and contest the boundaries of their worldviews and values. Using the Living Religion approach, which preferences people over texts, practices over beliefs, I will examine real-life instances of religious values leading to actions that often put individuals at odds with majority societal views, and even sometimes the law. I will analyse the implicit value-judgements in definitions of religion in UK equality laws and education curriculae, and trace a history of ridicule and attack by non-religious public intellectuals who, in so doing, display their own values and worldviews. I will conclude with observations upon the current state of public discourse and scholarship on religion, noting the problem of the preferencing of confessional approaches over academic approaches by many public bodies and institutions.

Read presenter biographies.

Anne Boddington
Kingston University, UK

Biography

Anne Boddington is Professor of Design Innovation, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business and Innovation at Kingston University in the UK and recently appointed as the Sub Panel Chair for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. Professor Boddington has extensive experience of the leadership, management and evaluation of art and design education and art and design research in higher education across the UK and internationally. She is an experienced chair and has held trustee and governance roles across the creative and cultural sector including as trustee of the Design Council, an independent Governor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a member of the executive of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design (CHEAD) and a member of the advisory board of the Arts & Humanities Research Council. She has an international reputation in creative education and research and has been a partner, a collaborator, a reviewer and evaluator for a wide range of international projects and reviews across Dofferemt nations in Europe, the Middle East, Southern and east Asia and North America.

David Putwain
Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Biography

Professor David Putwain is the Director for the Centre of Educational Research in the School of Education at Liverpool John Moores University and Chair of the Psychology of Education Section of the British Psychology Society. He taught in schools and 6th Form colleges from 1994 to 2003. After completing a PhD in 2006, Dave joined Edge Hill University working initially in the Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, where he established an undergraduate programme in Educational Psychology, and subsequently in the Faculty of Education. David joined Liverpool John Moores University in May 2016. His research interests focus on how psychological factors influence learning and achievement with a particular focus on student motivation, emotion, engagement, and the classroom environment.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Surviving High-stakes Exams: Do Teachers Help or Hinder?
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (USA).

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

Previous ECERP Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | “Identity” and “History, Story, Narrative”
Dexter Da Silva
Keisen University, Japan

Biography

Dr Dexter Da Silva is currently Professor of Educational Psychology at Keisen University in Tokyo. He has taught EFL at junior high school, language schools, and universities in Sydney, and for the past two decades has been living and teaching at the tertiary level in Japan. Professor Da Silva was educated at the University of Sydney (BA, Dip. Ed., MA), and the University of Western Sydney (PhD) He has presented and co-presented at conferences in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States, and written or co-written articles and book chapters on education-related topics, such as trust, student motivation, autonomy, and content-based language teaching. He is a past editor and current associate editor of On CUE Journal, regular reviewer for conferences and proceedings, and recent co-chair of the 2011 CUE Conference on Motivation.

Frank S. Ravitch
Michigan State University College of Law, USA

Biography

Frank S. Ravitch is Professor of Law and the Walter H. Stowers Chair in Law and Religion at the Michigan State University College of Law, and Director of the Kyoto, Japan Summer Program. He is the author of several books: Marketing Intelligent Design: Law And The Creationist Agenda (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011); Masters Of Illusion: The Supreme Court And The Religion Clauses (NYU Press 2007); Law And Religion, A Reader: Cases, Concepts, And Theory, 2nd Ed. (West 2008) (First Ed. 2004); Employment Discrimination Law (Prentice Hall 2005) (with Pamela Sumners and Janis McDonald); and School Prayer And Discrimination: The Civil Rights Of Religious Minorities And Dissenters (Northeastern University Press, 1999 & paperback edition 2001). Professor Ravitch has also published a number of law review articles addressing US and Japanese constitutional law, law & religion, and civil rights law in leading journals. Moreover, he has written a number of amicus briefs addressing constitutional issues to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2001, Professor Ravitch was named a Fulbright Scholar and served on the Faculty of Law at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Currently, he directs the Michigan State University College of Law Japan summer programme. Professor Ravitch regularly serves as an expert for print and broadcast media, and speaks on topics related to US Constitutional Law, Japanese Law, and Israeli Law to a wide range of national, international and local organisations. He speaks English, Japanese and Hebrew.