Professor Joseph Webster of the Faculty of Divinity has been awarded a £1.2M grant from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to undertake a new interdisciplinary research project entitled Exploring the Grey Zone: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Religious Delusions and Conspiracy Beliefs.
As project lead, Webster will undertake the project in collaboration with a team of nine other colleagues, including Dr Emilio Fernandez-Egea (Psychiatry, University of Cambridge), Professor Paul Fletcher (Neuroscience, University of Cambridge), Professor Richard Holton (Philosophy, University of Cambridge), Professor Fiona Macpherson (Philosophy, University of Glasgow), Professor Nayanika Mathur (Anthropology, University of Oxford), and Dr Valerie van Mulukom (Psychology, Oxford Brookes University), plus a team of three postdoctoral researchers.
Summarising the aims and objectives of the project, Webster said:
“We propose to develop a novel biopsychosocial formulation of delusional beliefs which combines complementary perspectives from social anthropology, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience.
“To do this, we will focus on what we call the 'grey zone': the border between delusional and non-delusional beliefs.
“Our analysis will be drawn together through a series of case studies within this ‘grey zone’, with a focus on religious ideas about being divinely ‘chosen’ and conspiracist ideas about being nefariously ‘targeted’. Such cases, where defining delusions is made more complex by prevailing cultural context, offer the best opportunity to elucidate the effects of social factors on information processing and belief formation.
“By radically foregrounding the beliefs and experiences of participants via a new interview method which hybridizes ethnographic and psychiatric approaches, Exploring the Grey Zone will critically rethink what counts as a delusion and a conspiracy theory in the context of ostensibly rational, normal beliefs. Importantly, we are excited about the project’s potential for real-world impact.
“In the current UK context, where mental ill-health and conspiracism both appear to be on the rise, the need for robust evidence-based research which empathetically listens to the voices of those who find themselves marginalized because they hold stigmatized beliefs has never been greater.”