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Our Student Spotlight for September is Nadine Sadler, first year PhD student in the School of Area Studies, Sociology, History, Politics and Literature.

What is your research?

I am a first year PhD student in the School of Area Studies, Sociology, History, Politics and Literature. My research focuses on the experiences of millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) who have left the Catholic Church, and how they seek fulfilment upon leaving. I am particularly interested in how people construct their identity and navigate moral and ethical issues without the doctrine of Catholicism to guide them.

Tell us a bit more about your research

48.5% of the England and Wales population identifies as having ‘no religion,’ a huge jump of around 8 million people between the 2011 and 2022 census’. England and Wales are home to around 3.8 million Catholics. However, around 6.8 million people report to having been brought up Catholic, indicating a lacking retention rate. While the Catholic population has remained steady over the last three decades and the age profile of Catholics is younger than that of Christians as a whole, millennials identify as being religiously unaffiliated more than any past generation. Fascinatingly, they are also one of two generations, along with Gen Z, to believe in a concept of hell.

My research focuses on something that Charles Taylor calls the “middle condition,” a kind of purgatory where the non-believer does not fall into complete melancholy but also never quite reaches fulfilment. Taylor believes that this is where non-believers fall into things like addiction. I would like to find out if the participants in my research describe anything like the middle condition after they leave religion and if so, how they find ways to navigate it.

While Catholic disaffiliation is discussed in the UK, much of the literature is based in the US and extraordinarily little is specific to millennials. Publications about millennials leaving the Church tend to be from Catholic interest groups themselves, discussing the best ways to “win them back.” While this thesis does seek to explore reasons for leaving, the particular focus is on “what happens next” for the participants. I will be using surveys and narrative interviews to collect rich qualitative data that tells the story of my participants’ experiences.

Tell us a bit about you

I am a millennial ex-Catholic and following a career of mixed academic and industry experience, it felt important to undertake a PhD that I am personally passionate about. My career and research so far have developed my professional passions, but I have always wanted to work in the sociology of religion. It felt like a now or never kind of deal and I went for it, which is the best move I have ever made. I feel right at home studying religion from a sociological standpoint and feel that it has given some real meaning and catharsis to my first-hand experiences of religious disaffiliation.

When I am not doing my PhD, I am an A Level Sociology teacher and love reading, so much so that we have started a PGR Society book club to make sure we do not only read textbooks and journal articles! I spend any spare time I have swimming or exploring my new hometown in Wiltshire.