Introducing myself

There are many things that I could write about, and much that could be written. My aim here is to focus on four things that I think might generate some comment.

I am an anthropologist by training, I am Professor of Liturgical and Congregational Studies and have published a Sociological History of Christian Worship. I am Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (Staffing) of the University of Birmingham. I am Chair of the Heritage and Cultural Learning Hub, that aims to provide digital solutions for galleries, museums, archives and libraries (GLAMs) and a member of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS). I was born in Tanzania and collect the sculptures, masks and other art of the Dogon societies of Mali.

I was described recently as a 'connecter'. Although I am not quite sure what was meant by that when it was said, I do know that I have always tended to be eclectic in my interests and am fascinated by what happens when the unexpected are juxtaposed and forced to talk to each other.

At one level this leads to a fascination with diversity. This picks up my anthropological roots of course, but also comes through in terms of the thrill of investigating the many different ways Christian worship (Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian churches as well as contemporary Pentecostal traditions and inculturation across Africa and beyond). It is seen in my most recent book on Discourses of Religious Diversity in Birmingham (and more of that later) and in my strong belief that the modern university has to be based in the celebration of diversity (both of people and of disciplines).

At another level it leads me to want to see theory from one field applied to something entirely other. I am dyslexic and think visually. I rarely work in straight lines and linear rationality or linear narrative seems so unreal. My exploration of multi-touch digital technology is perhaps more theoretical than practical, but it is the possibilities that this opens up for thinking in three or four dimensions, for unexpected and totally surprising juxtapositions and for collaborative research that really gets me excited. Post-modernism, we could say, began to take things to pieces, created intellectual debris without any real focus, or perhaps even any real future. We have to think beyond the post-modern, to the reconstructions, the reconfigurations that are possible, the multi-disciplinary investigations, the excitement of the new and the unexpected.

I love cities, I travel as and when I can. Maps fascinate me (again the visual thinking) and the layers of history and culture that can be seen in the buildings, the street furniture, the signs and the people of the city. I want to use this blog as a kind of exploratory journey through an imaginary intellectual cityscape, to comment on what I am reading, my conversations, my travels, my thoughts, and simply to see where this may lead. I welcome companions on the journey, why else would I blog, but I guess the journey will remain my own.

I have called this the Stringer Quartet. I want to follow four different, but probably overlapping paths, and will make it clear in the titles which thread each post will follow. These four strands, four strings if you like, reflect four areas of my current thinking and for now I will give them the following titles and subtitles.

• Towards a General Theory of Religion (what does it mean to be religious in the contemporary world?)
• The New Collegiality (what shape should the contemporary university - and especially Arts and Humanities - take?) 
• The Uses of the Dogon (my reflections on art, museums, anthropology, culture and tourism and the subject of my current writing project/book)
• Post-post-modernism (I have no better title for now, but aiming to get beyond linear rationality to a new way of thinking)