Welcome to NRM Ireland

In recent decades, the religious landscape of the island of Ireland has transformed dramatically. New religious movements and what is sometimes called the "New Age" have flourished, along with the arrival of religions long-established elsewhere. Ways of being which classify themselves as non-religious or as consciously resisting religion -new spiritualities, humanism, skepticism, anti-cult organisations etc - have also become far more significant.

These developments raise big questions for the study of religion, but also have important implications in fields as wide-ranging as gender relations, roads protests, the politics of church and state, immigration, tourism, funeral practices, education, youth cultures, health and regulation, globalization, and our relationship to the past, physical or imagined. They shed light on the transformation of religion in contemporary Ireland as well as providing us with insights into the nature of the society we live in.
With this in mind, we have just closed a call for theoretical and empirical papers in a range of disciplines on all aspects of these new movements in Ireland, including but not limited to "New Age" groups, pagan / Celtic movements, other new religious movements, world religions in Ireland, alternative medicine and bodywork, "cults" and schisms within established Irish churches, non- and anti-religious groups, and new religious movements abroad which have strong Irish roots or influences.

This is the first conference to bring together academic research on these topics in Ireland. We are interested in work on religious groups and movements, as well as more diffuse expressions of spirituality and religious organisation which have arrived, (re-)emerged or flourished in Ireland after 1945.

While the conference is dedicated to academic research, it will be open to the public and we expect interest from the media as well as from mainstream churches, alternative practitioners and other interested parties.