Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Professor Bettina Schmidt, Professor in Study of Religions and Anthropology of Religion at University of Wales Trinity Saint David and President of the British Association for the Study of Religion. Bettina is also Director of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre in Lampeter. Bettina is currently looking in her research at questions of spirituality, health and wellbeing and one of her areas of specialism is spirit possession and trance in Brazil and on vernacular forms of religion, such as voodoo, in the Caribbean. Originally from a working class background in Germany, where her father was a coal miner, Bettina reflects on how her mother made sure she and her sisters had a good education. Anthropology was a way for Bettina to see the world, and Bettina talks about the role that religion played in terms of identity in her mother’s life. Indeed, for Bettina, religious identity is more important in some respects than the content of religion. We learn what her pare