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Popular Culture & Digital Media (2025) course

Name: Popular Culture & Digital Media (2025)
Start: 2025-04-07
End: 2025-04-10
Location: Sarum College

This course considers the phenomena of mass consumer technological culture and new media as the backdrop to contemporary reflections on and engagements with spirituality and theology.

Students will explore and analyse current habits of work, leisure, and communication, and lifestyle in distinction to traditional conceptions and explore the scale of the impact of current technologies and emerging norms on religious belief and practice.

The course will examine the potential for leisure and lifestyle activities to mimic and replace religious modes of knowledge and identity production, examining the writings of sociologists, social anthropologists, social critics and theologians that address and/or interpret this phenomenon.

We will trace the emergence of the phenomena of popular culture, mass communication, and digital media—exploring how they have been conceptualised and critiqued—and students will be encouraged to develop critical responses to these technologies from the perspectives of theology and Christian spirituality.

This is a postgraduate course open to ‘auditors’ e.g. those not enrolled for academic credit.

What does it mean to audit a course?

This course would make an excellent addition to a study break, retreat or sabbatical in the beautiful Salisbury Cathedral Close, where residential participants enjoy full board, access to the library and to the pattern of liturgy at Salisbury Cathedral.

Whether it’s cultural events, sightseeing (Stonehenge is nearby for example) or shopping — there’s plenty to do if you’d like to extend your stay the weekend before and after the course. For ideas, visit Salisbury Cathedral Close attraction websites to see what’s on Sarum’s doorstep. Visit the Wiltshire Creative website to view events at nearby Salisbury Playhouse and the Salisbury Arts Centre. The Experience Salisbury website has an excellent city-wide listing of forthcoming events around the city.

Need financial assistance? View our list of grantmaking trusts

Learn more about postgraduate study in Christian Spirituality

Enrolled students also may attend teaching weeks for modules in addition to the modules which they are studying for credit, by permission of the Programme Leader. The audit fee and hospitality prices are reviewed annually with any changes effective from 1 July.

The image used to illustrate this course is by PantheraLeo1359531 details

Book Event

(non-residential) Popular Culture & Digital Media £495

Includes the evening meal on Monday, lunch and refreshments on the remaining course days. No B&B nor evening meal Tuesday and Wednesday.

Available Tickets: 5

The (non-residential) Popular Culture & Digital Media ticket is sold out. You can try another ticket or another date.

(residential) Popular Culture & Digital Media £795

Residential with B&B (ensuite). Check-in 7 April; check out on 10 April. Includes evening meals on course days.

Available Tickets: 5

The (residential) Popular Culture & Digital Media ticket is sold out. You can try another ticket or another date.

Details

Dates & Times

07 - 10 Apr 2025

Day 1 - Starts at 2pm, Day 2 & 3 - Full days, Day 4 - finishes by 4pm

Location

Sarum College

Course code

Other Notes

This is a postgraduate course open to those not enrolled for academic credit. It will be held onsite at Sarum College.

All ticket options include lunch and refreshments on each day of the course.

Residential tickets include an evening meal along with B&B.

For queries, please contact maadministrator@sarum.ac.uk

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What our students say

PhD Research Programmes

Visual Artist Claire Reed

The complex and sometimes fractious relationship between contemporary art and religion has intrigued me throughout my art career, informing my direction as an artist. It has led me to work in sacred spaces with their immediate and wider communities, to study an MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture at Sarum College, and recently to become artist–researcher at Leo Baeck College of Jewish scholarship and learning.

My aim is to examine the extent to which this creative approach might generate fruitful inter-religious theological insights within a Jewish and Christian ministry training context.

Sarum College combines an open-minded embrace of the imagination and the arts with a supportive, questioning and diverse community. Crucially for me, the Sarum-Winchester PhD programme is one of the very few UK university programmes to offer a hybrid thesis in art and theology in which the creative process and resulting art output along with a written critical component are presented for examination.

This PhD research is a key part of my development as an artist engaged with theology and inter-religious dialogue.

Read full article

Stimulating and Challenging

What is Successful Ageing? led by James Woodward

I enjoyed the course immensely from beginning to end – the seamless interweaving of knowledge, ideas and research and the linking with belief and faith.

The content was stimulating, challenging, thought provoking and I was greatly appreciative of the contributions and questions from other participants, your considered and sensitive responses and integration with your presentations.

Thank you!

Netflix, Theology and Pastoral Practice

Peter Butchers on his MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture student experience

How do cultural tropes, like those found in Black Mirror, help bridge the gap between what academic theology espouses and what the everyday Christian believes? In his research as a student on the MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture, Peter Butchers explored platonic philosophy, digital theology and eschatology, and pastoral practice around death and dying.

Rewarding Sabbatical Stay

The Revd Greg Syler, is Rector of Ascension & St. George’s, Resurrection Parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC USA, spent part of his ministry sabbatical at Sarum College in spring 2022.

His account of the experience begins: ‘I loved spending nearly three weeks of my ministry sabbatical at Sarum College earlier this year.

Not only did I rest, and rest well in the comfortable care of the Sarum College staff, I experienced very significant renewal and fresh insights.’

The Road Not Taken

Sarum Graduate Mike Truman

January 2022

Five years ago, I told my Warden of Readers that I would not be renewing my licence when it expired in 2019, as I thought my faith was becoming too unorthodox for a Church of England licensed lay minister. As someone who knew me well, she challenged me to actively explore what I did still believe. Thus started the journey that ended last August with the dissertation completing my MA in Theology Imagination and Culture (MATIC) at Sarum College.

Clergy Study Breaks

The opportunity for clergy to get away occasionally from their own context, to have an overnight stay in the beautiful setting of Sarum College and all that the Salisbury Cathedral Close offers is hugely valuable. All the clergy I have suggested who have spent 24hrs at Sarum College have benefit greatly from the experienced mentoring where they can talk, reflect, think, plan and pray.

The support and encouragement they receive is excellent and has a positive on their on going ministry. This is something the Diocese of Rochester encourages and supports financially in preparation for their clergy preparing for Extended Ministerial Development Leave (Sabbatical).

— Canon Christopher Dench, Diocese of Rochester Director of Formation and Ministry

Popular Culture & Digital Media (2025)