With nearly 550,000 postgraduate students in England, 25% of whom claim to be Christian, it is a mystery why we know virtually nothing about their experiences. Indeed, both the postgraduate experience and students' religious identity are subjects scarcely explored, even separately. Together, however, essentially nothing is known about this cohort.

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The Experiences of Postgraduate Christian Students Project was designed to start to fill this gap in our knowledge. As a first step, it aims to explore who postgraduate Christian students are and what they go through at university. We aim to find out about both the benefits and advantages of being a religious student, and the difficulties it may entail. Our hope is that by bringing these experiences to the light, an awareness of the large minority Christian students form will start to emerge.

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There are two main elements to the project. A quantitative element - through the survey you can find on this website; and a qualitative element - through dozens of interviews with Christian students and their leaders. These will aim to reach students at three types of institutions: ancient universities with religious foundations; secular universities; and universities presently affiliated to a church - the so called Cathedrals Group.

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This project is conducted by Szilvi Watson, as her PhD research at the University of Oxford. It  is funded by generous scholarships from the University and from the St Matthias Trust. For any further enquiries, please contact Szilvi here.