Queen's University Belfast is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Founded in 1845, it is a 🏷️#university with deep roots in the academic life of the region and a research portfolio spanning the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
Queen's holds particular standing in the cognitive science of religion as the home of the pioneering 📝Institute of Cognition and Culture, one of the first research centres dedicated to applying cognitive and evolutionary science to the study of religion and culture. It was in that orbit that Justin Lane earned his Masters and did the formative early research that set the trajectory for his later work.
Belfast was my first time overseas, and it was eye-opening. Studying in that environment — surrounded by the people building the cognitive science of religion at the Institute of Cognition and Culture — shaped how I came to think about belief, culture, and method. It was where the path really opened up.