The Lanka Summit
📅 National Seminary of Our Lady of Lanka, Ampitiya, Kandy
📍Friday 23rd October 2026 // 2:30-6:30pm
A research summit on religion in a smartphone age,
in collaboration with the National Seminary of Our Lady of Lanka
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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.
Below is the final but flexible event schedule.
🕒 14:00 – 14:30 Registration
Please try to arrive before the official start of the summit to register.
🕒 14:30 – 15:40 Introduction
We’ll begin with an opening prayer, then Rev. Fr. Kasun Fernando will introduce Dr David, the workshop leader. Dr David will help you become familiar with the stories submitted by attendees. In small groups, you’ll read anonymised stories that have pre-sorted into a small set (Step 1). You’ll also interpret aggregated demographic data (Step 2). You’ll record your thoughts on sticky notes; this helps capture recurring patterns and other striking ideas from the stories and data.
🕒 15:40 – 16:15 The Narrative Typology
After becoming familiar with the stories and demographic data, you’ll begin to describe your set of stories, giving it a working name (‘The _____ Narrative’) and a two-sentence definition (‘The stories typically ….’). This helps identify what’s distinct and interesting about your stories, including the ideas they convey about Gen Z, religion, and online influencers (Steps 3 and 4).
🕒 16:15 – 16:45 Refreshment Break
🕒 16:45 – 17:45 Presenting the Lanka Stories
As a group, you’ll finalise your narrative-type, including its name and description (Step 5), and present it to the entire audience (Step 6). Attendees will give supportive feedback. The best presentation wins a prize!
🕒 17:45 – 18:00 Conclusion
Finally, we’ll recap the day, share final reflections, and complete the post-summit survey. We’ll look ahead to the future of the Gen Z Role Models Project and celebrate our achievements together.