Sara Savage
- Senior Research Associate, (Applied Subgroup), Psychology
and Religion Research Group
Profile
Sara is Senior Research Associate with the Psychology and
Religion Research Group, and has been a member of the Research
Group since 1998 (formerly, the Psychology and Christianity
Project). A social psychologist, her PhD research at the University
of Cambridge focused on the social and cognitive aspects of
fundamentalism and moral reasoning. She is co-author of The Human
Face of Church (Savage & Boyd-Macmillan 2007); Making Sense of
Generation Y: the world view of 15-25 year olds, (Savage,
Mayo-Collins & Mayo, 2006); Psychology for Christian Ministry
(Watts, Nye & Savage, 2002), The Beta Course, a multi-media
pastoral care course (Savage, Watts & Layzell, 2004, University
of Cambridge); along with chapters and articles on fundamentalism,
the arts and embodiment, and the social psychological dynamics of
religious groups and organisations. Formerly a dancer and
choreographer, and director of the dance group Icon, Sara has an
ongoing interest in the arts. Her current work focuses on
educational resources for young Muslims vulnerable to violent
radicalisation, conflict transformation among senior church
leaderrs, and mission in western culture. She is the current Chair
of the British Association of Christians in Psychology.
Research interests
Sara’s doctoral work focused on the different styles of moral
cognition evidenced in Christian fundamentalists and
non-fundamentalists, and their potential for integrative
negotiation strategies. Sara directed a nationwide research project
into the spirituality and world view of 16-25 year olds, and has
undertaken and supervised research based church consultancy for the
past 7 years, yielding insight for the pioneer ministry textbook
The Human Face of Church. Recent research focuses on the cognitive
and group dynamics at play among young people vulnerable to
recruitment for religiously motivated violence. This involves the
development of educational resources to enable young people and
religious leaders to ‘see through’ and counter the strategies of
radicalisers. These resources will be tested for their
effectiveness, and then shared widely throughout the UK and EU.
Current action research includes training senior church leaders
across the major denominations to achieve higher levels of
integrative complexity to help transform entrenched religious
conflicts. A parallel action research project is planned with Imams
in the UK. The next large project that Sara will be directing
focuses on Christian mission in western culture, in particular, how
the intersection between biblical and the ordinary ‘lived’
narratives can involve people in a transformational re-shaping of
narratives. This project will be carried in the UK, USA, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In short, Sara is
interested in the interplay between theological world view and
social psychological processes.
