About Me
My name is Jasjit Singh. I am a Doctoral Researcher on a Collaborative Studentship which is part of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society programme. The research is being jointly funded by the Religion and Society programme and the Bradford Educational and Cultural Association of Sikhs (BECAS), an organisation formed 25 years ago to oversee the educational interests of Sikh children and young people.
I am based in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds where my research is being supervised by Prof. Kim Knott and Dr. Sean McLoughlin. Having a strong background in IT, I have also become the website administrator for the Writing British Asian Cities project the Performance, Politics and Piety project, and the 'Hajj: A survey of British Muslim Experiences' project.
How I got here
I currently live with my wife and son in North Leeds. Having graduated from the University of Manchester in 1993 with a degree in Computer Science and Accounting, I spent around twelve years working in I.T. in a variety of roles including Business Analyst, Systems Analyst and Database Administrator. Whilst working I used most of my holidays to travel and undertook a trip round the world in 1997.
I have always been interested in Sikhism and in 2005 decided to undertake some structured study on the Sikh tradition. I consequently studied part time for a course on World Religions with the Open University in which I achieved a Distinction. This allowed me to start a two year, part time MA in Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds from October 2005. As part of this course I studied Research Process and Methods, Religion in Public Life, Contemporary Issues in Religion and Gender and Religion and Post-colonialism. I completed the course by undertaking a dissertation on young British Sikhs, hair and the turban, and again achieved a Distinction in the MA.
For my dissertation I interviewed 25 young Sikhs about their views on hair and the turban and found that I really enjoyed the process of research, particularly ethnography and interviewing and focusing on the tradition in which I have been born and brought up. I was particularly struck by the amount of effort and energy being put in by young British Sikhs to teach others about Sikhism, and wanted to understand what drives these Sikhs to put in so much effort. At this time, the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society programme was seeking research projects for its second phase on Religion and Youth. With the encouragement of my MA supervisor Prof Kim Knott, we applied for a collaborative studentship as part of this phase in collaboration with BECAS (Bradford Educational and Cultural Association of Sikhs). We were successful in this application at which point I had to decide whether to continue in I.T. or to leave work and start a full time PhD. As the opportunity to undertake a fully funded PhD does not come around often, with the support of my wife and family I left work in October 2008 to study for this PhD full time.
Given that only one course on Sikh Studies is currently offered in the UK (Birmingham) and that very few institutions even offer modules on Sikhism - it is clear that Sikhism continues to be under-represented in academia, and that little has changed since Juergensmeyer described Sikhism as “arguably the most neglected of India’s religious traditions” (1979: 13). I am hoping through my research to contribute a Sikh voice to the field of the Sociology of Religion.
Having been married for over 10 years, we have thankfully recently become parents. Our son, Balraj, was born in September 2009. In becoming a father and studying a subject which I am very interested in, I am very appreciative that this is one of the most exciting periods of my life.
