Thursday, March 18, 4-6pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

How does the study of religion help us to understand conspiracy theories — like QAnon? From fears of Satanic paedophile cabals in Washington to 5G affecting our chakras, there are plenty of examples of conspiracy theories as, in and about religion, but are there underlying structural reasons that they are such frequent bedfellows? David G. Robertson will introduce the idea of epistemic capital as a way to understand how different ideas and entrepreneurs become popular in the marketplace of stigmatised knowledge. Finally, we’ll look at QAnon, to show how ideas move through religious and conspiratorial spheres.

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 applies critical theory to the study of alternative and emerging religions and to “conspiracy theory” narratives. He is the author of UFOs, the New Age and Conspiracy Theories: Millennial Conspiracism (Bloomsbury, 2016) and co-editor of After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies (Equinox, 2016) and Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion (Brill, 2018).

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Hosted by OSU Center for the Study of Religion.