Baptist scholar involved in British Academy research on COVID-19 

Professor Paul Weller has secured British Academy special COVID funding to conduct, together with Dr Sanjee Perera, research on The Organizational, Financial and Human Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Christian Faith-Based Organization Service Sector in Great Britain 

Professor Weller is a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Derby, and also a Research Fellow in Religion and Society and Associate Director (UK) of the Oxford Centre for Religion  and Culture at Regent's Park College, a Baptist foundation Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford.

He is conducting this project from one of his other employed bases within the Faith and Peaceful Relations Research Group at Coventry University's Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations. The project is the only one of 56 projects funded (out of 842 applications) by the Academy from its special COVID research fund to focus on religion. Further information on this is available on the project webpage, from which a more detailed PDF is also downloadable.

The project began at the start of August and is scheduled to run until April 2021. You can follow and engage with its Twitter account at @19_fbo. The project's main research instrument is an online survey of Christian FBOs which will take place between October 2020 and January 2021. In March 2021 there will be a project Knowledge Exchange conference to which also FBOs of other than Christian faith will be invited to engage with the project findings also from their perspective.

Professor Weller said, 'It is a privilege to be working on this project, given the important place that Christian faith-based organisations have in the service sector overall, and have especially had in recent times, in both the Christian, inter-faith, and wider community response to COVID-19.'

If readers know of Christian faith-based organisations that might wish to take part in the project survey, and/or may wish to participate in the project's planned Knowledge Exchange conference, or in any case might just have an interest in the project, please contact the project's email address at: fbocovidresearch@coventry.ac.uk