Social Consequences of Religion: Year 2

Over the past year, the Social Consequences of Religion (SCORE) team has been collecting biographic data in order to conduct a systematic analysis of published works on the subject of religion and cooperation. The project will will conduct a state-of-the-art bibliometric analysis of these publications. Once the data is analyzed, our team will be able to determine points of consensus and debate, areas of over- and under-study, and where the big outstanding questions, opportunities, misunderstandings, and research needs lie within the field.

A team of 30 research assistants has been gathering information about the careers of leading researchers who study religion and/or cooperation. In total, the team has compiled detailed information about the lives and careers of over 13,000 researchers, including information about the institutions and departments where they have conducted their research.

The data-compiling phase of this project is now wrapped up, and our data analytics team is working to transform this massive dataset into a detailed mapping of the research communities who study human religion and biological cooperation. This granular mapping of these academic fields will reveal much about their historical evolution, the topics of greatest interest at present, and even something about their likely future development.

Thanks to the whole SCORE team, especially the research assistants who have worked so hard over the last 6 months, and Postdcotoral Fellow Dave Rohr who has been leading the team!

This project was generously funded by the Templeton Religion Trust.