We had a great conversation in November based around the contributions from our three speakers – Zoe Strong, Sthembiso Zwane and Jacob Hasnoot. The accidental theme of the evening was countries beginning with ‘S’ – Scotland, South Sudan and South Africa.

Zoe took us into her nearly completed doctoral work on dyslexia and Bible reading in Scotland, looking at positive and harmful dynamics, alongside three theological reflections emerging from her research around the ‘good’ Christian, slowing down and power. Sthembiso brought preacher’s alliteration to characterising the work of the Ujaama centre in South Africa as an invited space, an invigorated space and an invented space, giving many illustrations of this see/judge/act framework from the Bible. Jacob gave us an account of his doctoral research to date in South Sudan looking at the themes of ethnicity, violence and peace by ‘ordinary’ Bible readers. He also helpfully drew out a number of common challenges facing Bible user researchers that will no doubt be revisited in future network discussions.