Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (Proceedings of the British Academy: Themed volumes of essays in the humanities and social sciences 2025)

Religion, Spirituality, and Public Health focuses on exploring the role of different ‘ways of knowing’ or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in religious and alternative health milieus. While biomedical solutions offer a dominant narrative, these are articulated differently in global contexts. Moreover, individuals often draw upon alternative framings that are sometimes oppositional to and at other times engaged with directives from medical and governmental authorities.

The focus of this volume is worldviews and epistemes that are often marginalised or rejected in dominant discourses ― from shamanism in Korea to African Pentecostalism in Britain, and from global online ‘AntiVax’ narratives to traditional Siddha medicine in South India. Detailed case studies explore the contested, competing and strategically aligned relationships between mainstream and marginal epistemes; between religious healing, spirituality and biomedicine; and between politics and belief. These explorations promote greater insight into how marginalised religious epistemes are employed. Which beliefs and practices are drawn upon to create meaningful and effective responses? And how can we better understand the depth and breadth of these reactions to design more successful public health strategies for future global health crises?

Karen O’Brien-Kop is lecturer in Asian Religions at King’s College London. She works on Hindu and Buddhist mind-body philosophies in South Asian Sanskrit texts as well as critical perspectives in contemporary religious cultures. She has published Rethinking ‘Classical’ Yoga and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality (Bloomsbury 2021) and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Indian Philosophy, Journal of the British Academy and Religious Studies. She is co-editor of the journal Religions of South Asia and co-chair of the Indian and Chinese Religions in Dialogue research unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Suzanne Newcombe is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University (UK) and the director of Inform, based in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. Much of her work has focused on investigating the popularization of yoga in the modern period. From 2015-2020 she was a researcher on the European Research Council project AYURYOG: Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy in South Asia. Since 2001, she has also explored different aspects of health and healing in a variety of new and minority religions through her work with Inform.