The Social Science Research Council is proud to announce the ten scholars selected to receive 2026 Innovation in Religion and Spirituality seed grants. The seed grants aim to foster research on the wider implications of new forms of religious and spiritual life. This program is offered from the Religion and the Public Sphere program with the support of the Luce Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. 

Seen as a whole, the funded projects examine novel practices, new technologies, and new forms of religious or spiritual mobilization and their ripple effects in politics, capitalism, and social life. Selected projects address topics including democratic civic practices among U.S. Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religious leaders; generative artificial intelligence and claims to religious authority; how occult or alternative spiritual practices attain legitimacy; transnational studies of spiritual objects; and more.

Innovation in Religion and Spirituality 2026 Seed Grant Recipients

Orit Avishai, Fordham University, “Faithful Resistance: Democratic Civic Practice as Religious Innovation”

Elaine Fisher, Stanford University, “Experiential Technologies and Religious Innovation: How Independent Charismatic Christianity is Reshaping Our World”

Nomaan Hasan and Natasha Raheja, Cornell University, “Recombinant Traditions: Religious Innovation Amid Polarization in the South Asian American Diaspora”

Sohaib Khan, Occidental College, “Financing the American Dream, Sharī‘a Style: Islamic Legal Innovation and Homeownership in the United States”

Corinna Laughlin, Loyola Marymount University, “The American evangelical imaginary of AI”

Ayabulela Mhlahlo, University of Connecticut, “Die Ontwikkeling van die Geest: A Conceptual Map of Afrikanerdom Fascism and the Philo-Mythical Roots of Techno-Afrikanderdom”

Mario Mikulincer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Negotiating Revelation and Tradition: Psychedelic Experience, Religious Innovation, and Community in American Jewish Life”

Tania Ravaei, Indiana University Bloomington, “Technology-Mediated Religious Practice: A National Survey Experiment on Legitimacy, Authority, and Sacredness”

Sydney Sheedy, Radboud University Nijmegen, “Queer Occult LA: Alternative Spiritual Cultures as Spaces of both Rebranding and Reclaiming”

Qi Yi, University of Michigan, “Contested Authenticity and Spiritual Access: Sacred Commodities and Chinese Diasporic Amulet Practices in the San Gabriel Valley”