Ruth Slatter’s research while affiliated with University of London and other places

This article critically reflects on the Victoria County History's (VCH) relationship with participatory historical geography approaches. Telling a story of change, it argues that it is not only possible, but also extremely productive for long‐standing, well‐established academic research projects to embrace participatory approaches and engage in transformative research. The VCH is a national project to write the history of every parish‐sized area in England. Begun in 1899, the VCH's contemporary network of place‐based historians still actively pursues this goal. Overseen by a central editorial team, most of the network's activities are conceived, run and funded by independent county trusts. These trusts research and write the VCH's well‐known ‘Big Red Books’ and a range of shorter publications, but have also begun to cultivate participatory projects that embed local communities in the development of local histories and allow these communities to reflect on how their histories have shaped their collective identities. Focusing on the project's engagement with local knowledge and communities, this article traces the VCH's use of collaborative and participatory methodologies. Acknowledging the VCH's routes in Victorian encyclopaedic endeavours, it critically reflects on how it collaborated with local people during the early twentieth century. Shifting its attention to the early twenty‐first century, it then considers how the VCH has begun to develop frameworks for engaging in individually, socially and academically transformative research. While recognising the limitations of these approaches, it highlights the latent potential within the VCH's emerging engagement with participatory historical geography approaches and, emphasising how the project's future depends on continual integration of participatory methods within its activities and outputs, identifies several ways in which the VCH could continue to develop its participatory methods.

This review assesses (anglophone) cross‐disciplinary research that has used geographical methodologies to study religion in the past. It identifies three prominent themes within the existing literature: the spatalisation of religion, the intersections between religion and built environments, and the relationships between religion and physical landscapes. It argues that the application of geographical approaches to the study of religion in the past has made important contributions to feminist and postcolonial attempts to de‐centre religious leaders and social elites. However, it also demonstrates that the existing literature has been fundamentally informed by inherently modern and western definitions of religion. Primarily, it identifies how the existing literature has prioritised the study of institutionalised Abrahamic religions, emphasised the analysis of sacred‐secular dichotomies, and assumed that religious affiliation involves personal belief and spiritual encounter. In response, this paper calls for geographical approaches to religion in the past to engage with a more diverse range of subjects and use network or assemblage approaches to challenge modern and western assumptions about religious practices and experiences.

This paper advances the geographies of religion, spirituality and faith's limited attention to positionality by discussing the critical issues raised when using participatory approaches. Reflecting on three cases of participatory research, we foreground the dynamics of being a researcher with faith when working with participants from faith communities. Advocating participatory approaches as valuable methodologies that should be used more extensively to explore beliefs, faith practices, and social justice, we argue that greater attention needs to be given to the positionality of researchers undertaking this sort of research. Our cases raise three themes for discussion. First, the variety of ways in which faith positionalities influence how research is developed, concluded and concluded. Second, the intersections between our faith and other positionalities and how they shape our roles and relationships with research participants. Third, the fluid and multifaceted nature of faith positionalities and how they are changed, emphasized, and softened through the dynamics and entanglements of fieldwork. In doing so, we reflect on the complexities of being a researcher with faith, argue that faith positionality is a helpful dimension of their research rather than a limitation, and that all cultural, social and historical geographical researchers should reflect on their faith positionality.