News

The Department of Sociology are delighted to announce that Professor Claire Blencowe has been selected to receive a prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. The grant, worth £1.8 million, will enable her to lead a 5-year, cross-continental, cross-faith investigation of the role of religious authority in extractive industry struggles.

Specific disputes over specific mines are the battlegrounds of some of the most profound political, social and economic struggles of our age. Investigating case studies in the USA, Brazil, India and Indonesia, the team will explore how religion is mobilised in those disputes including to support the interests of extractive corporations and to support marginalised local communities who confront those corporations.

"I am beyond delighted to have been selected for this award because I feel that the project is so important – not only for multiple academic disciplines, but also for environmental movements, and mining-affected communities, separated by continents and faiths, but connected by global industry and existential challenges. The project will transform academic theories about the power/knowledge tactics of extractive industry corporations, spotlighting religious racism and religious nationalism. Equally, it will demonstrate the enduring importance of religion in supporting people who are caught up in the damages and disputes generated by mining. Employing participatory action research, we aim to celebrate, connect and build the existing expertise and capacity of marginalized local communities, fostering democracy for people and planet" says Professor Blencowe.

Assembly of the project team will begin in early 2026 with recruitment for two researchers to work on case studies in the USA and Brazil.

The official ERC announcement can be viewed here: https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/news/erc-2025-consolidator-grants-results

Official abstract from the research grant:

Religious Authority in Extractive Industry Struggles

RAIDS aims to establish that religion is a crucial terrain of authority that contributes to determining (un)equal and (un)just outcomes in extractive industry struggles. Religious authority has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on extraction. I suggest this is because the Eurocentric ‘secularisation thesis’ continues to limit the sociological imagination such that religious authority is only seen as relevant to the past, traditional’ societies, or ‘extremist’ groups, despite extensive evidence of the enduring political importance of religion. Religion is widely recognised as an important aspect of Indigenous relations with land, but the contemporary role of religion in securing (and thus also challenging) interests of big businesses and geopolitically dominant states is scarcely acknowledged. Thus, religion has not been properly understood as a relevant terrain of authority. RAIDS will show that religious authority is both a ‘weapon of the weak’ and a weapon of the most powerful interests in contemporary extractive industry struggles. By identifying and analysing the significance of religious authority within eight specific mining disputes located in India, Indonesia, Brazil and the USA (spanning multiple faiths) and theorising the role of religious authority in extractive industry struggles in general, the project will open new ways for scholars and activists to understand and challenge inequalities and injustice.

RAIDS builds on my innovative research on the role of religion in the expansion of extractive industries in 18th-19th C British Empire by investigating contemporary phenomena and multiple faiths. It breaks new ground in decolonial-feminist participatory research, offering new ways to centre voices and in-sights of communities who confront extractive industries on the ground. It addresses urgent questions about power and justice within land and labour disputes that are intensifying in the context of climate catastrophe and post-carbon transition.