The Durham Summit
📅 Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham University
📍 Saturday 9th May 2026
A research seminar on youth religion in a digital age,
in collaboration with the Diocese of Durham, Church of England
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Summit overview
The Gen Z Summit is a participatory event designed to integrate you into the research process of The Gen Z Role Models Project. Led by Dr Edward David, the project was launched at Oxford University and is now based at King’s College London.
At the summit, we’ll work collaboratively to interpret new data from the project’s story completion study on Gen Z’s religious and spiritual role models. You and your fellow participants are not observers but are genuine co-researchers, playing a meaningful role in the interpretation of data.
The summit is structured around a novel qualitative method designed for the project. It’s called Exemplarist Narrative Analysis (ENA). ENA helps us interpret single stories, as well as a large set of stories, to unearth their cosmic, self, and moral meanings. These meanings are commonly associated with religious and spiritual traditions, and they are typically embodied by religious or spiritual exemplars.
Our aim is analyse new story-completion submissions in light of the study’s two research questions:
- RQ1: Who do Gen Zers look up to for religious and spiritual guidance?
- RQ2: What do these guides reveal about Gen Zers’ understandings of religion and spirituality?
Agenda
You will soon be a co-researcher of the Gen Z Role Models Project. The summit is designed to induct you into the research process and to give you hands-on experience analysing the story-completion data. As a group, our main goal will involve categorising new story-completion submissions per the narrative-typology of the Oxford Pilot. You’ll leave the summit with a new set of research skills and a greater understanding of Generation Z and youth approaches to religion and spirituality. Edward and Claire MacLeod (Oxford University) will guide us through the day.
Below is the final but flexible event schedule.
🕒 09:20 – 9:30 Registration
Please try to arrive before the official start of the summit to register.
🕒 09:30 – 10:15 Introduction and Research Questions
We’ll warm up by considering what your “ideal” spiritual role model is like. Then, Edward will introduce our research questions and explore what people are currently saying about Gen Z and religion.
🕒 10:15 – 10:45 Methodology
To analyse the new story-completion submissions, we’ll first need to understand the project’s methodology. Claire and Edward will walk through the project’s qualitative and participatory methods, its philosophical assumptions, and new participant demographics (presented in the aggregate).
🕒 10:45 – 12:00 Exemplarist Narrative Analysis
Next, we’ll learn the project’s analytical approach, called Exemplarist Narrative Analysis (ENA), as well as its existing typology of five spiritual narratives. We’ll reflect on which narrative-type is most meaningful for you. Then, we’ll systematically analyse new story-completion submissions together.
🕒 12:00 – 13:30 Lunch and River Walk
🕒 13:30 – 15:00 Discussion
We’ll wrap up our ENA and regroup to discuss recurring cosmic, self, and moral themes. These reflections will contribute to the developing analysis of the dataset. Along the way, we’ll consider how our positionality both deepens and limits our analysis.
🕒 15:00 – 16:00 Conclusion and Action Steps
Finally, we’ll recap the day, capture our final reflections, and celebrate our achievements. We’ll also brainstorm further opportunities to be involved in the research.
Icebreaker
Welcome to the Summit at Durham. How are you feeling right now? Choose a blob.
