Jacqueline Ryle

Biography

Jacqueline Ryle was an English social anthropologist who joined the School of Social Sciences in February 2014. Fiji has been part of my life, however, since 1993 when she first came here to start her doctoral research. Between 1993 and 1998 she conducted 22 months of rural and urban fieldwork for her PhD in Social Anthropology at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London. During this period she was a Research Associate at the then Institute of Pacific Studies, USP, an Associate at the Fiji Museum and a Departmental Visitor at Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. From 2002 – 2005 she conducted a further 10 months of fieldwork in Fiji for a postdoctoral position at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, also conducting anthropological research seminars for research staff at ECREA. In 2005 and 2006 she taught anthropology at the Pacific Regional Seminary, the Catholic seminary in Fiji while also continuing my research. For a number of years she worked on climate change from faith-based perspectives in a faith-based civil society organisation in Denmark while continuing to write up her research. her monograph, My God, My Land - Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji (Ashgate 2010), nominated for the 2012 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, includes both my doctoral and postdoctoral research. It explores how representations of Christianity and people's beliefs and faith are interconnected and interwoven in historical relations.

Research Interest

she conducted research among clergy and lay people in Methodist, Pentecostal, Catholic and Anglican churches and communities in rural and urban settings as well as in Interfaith Search Fiji. The book focuses on the complex relations between Christianity, tradition, politics and reconciliation, how people’s individual and communal faith experience connect with local/ national and local, regional and global perspectives. she employ an interdisciplinary perspective in her research, drawing on sources and data from anthropology, history, sociology of religion, theology, political science and geography