The King’s Summit
📅 King’s College London | 📍 Thursday 26th February 2026
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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 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 is 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 to explore three 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?
- RQ3: How might these findings influence us—as individuals, as organisations, or as a society?
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. 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.
🕒 11:40 – 12:00 Registration
Please try to arrive before the official start of the summit to register. Lunch and refreshments will be available throughout the summit.
🕒 12:00 – 12:15 Why study Gen Z’s spiritual narratives?
Dr David will kick-off with a mini-lecture on what we know about Gen Z religion and will discuss the benefits of a story-first approach to understanding religion and spiritual experience.
🕒 12:15 – 12:45 What brings you to the summit?
What do you hope to learn and explore? We’ll think, pair, share, and introduce ourselves to each other.
🕒 12:45 – 13:30 How might we study Gen Z’s spiritual narratives?
You’ll learn the research design of the Gen Z Role Models Project and will learn how to do Exemplarist Narrative Analysis (ENA) through a worked example.
🕒 13:30 – 13:40 Comfort break
🕒 13:40 – 14:25 What might this exemplarist narrative say?
We’ll be split into ten groups, and each group will analyse one assigned story, conceptualised as an ‘exemplarist narrative’. We’ll present our interpretations to the whole group.
🕒 14:15 – 15:00 What might these exemplarist narratives say?
Each group will identify themes across the ten stories and will present their interpretations to the whole group. Creativity and attention to positionality is encouraged.
🕒 15:00 – 15:30 What’s next?
The summit is just the beginning. We’ll reflect on our collective themes and research questions. You’ll commit to submitting the post-event survey, your ticket for the letter of participation.
🕒 15:30 – 17:00 Post-summit outing
If you’re not in a rush, then please join us for post-summit merriment. Pending good weather, we may stroll to the nearby Victoria Embankment Garden or another iconic London venue.
Icebreaker
Welcome to the Summit at KCL. How are you feeling right now? Choose a blob.
