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My name is David Cheetham and I'm a Senior Lecturer here in Theology and Religion.
My main speciality is the philosophy of religion and I study also the relations between religions
as well so I spend a lot of my time talking about the meaning of life with students in
the classroom. It sounds like a really pretentious thing but that's what I tend to do.
I think it's really vital. I think people mostly are very interested in religious questions.
People are always asking questions about what's the purpose of it all. So it's a very important
area to study. It's also important because people want to know about the relations between
religions as well. That they all say the same thing and how might they all live together.
So it's a very important thing to study.
I think religion actually is very important to society. Society might not always recognise
that fact. Religion is always there in the background or in the foreground maybe of people's
lives. So I think religion has to be taken seriously. We have to study it, we can't just
ignore it if we're going to have a cohesive society.
There's lots of very interesting people. Most of the scholars in the department are at the
cutting edge of the field. They are the kind of people that you really want to ask questions
about. They normally have not necessarily the right answers, but they have the latest
answers.
Many of the students also are very challenging. I find most of my challenges come in the lecture
theatre rather than actually from my colleagues.
I think the people in Birmingham are very friendly but they're also very diverse. You
get lots of very different people living in Birmingham. My favourite reason for being
in Birmingham though is I'm a curry fan. If you don't like spicy foods don't come to Birmingham,
but obviously if you do it's the place to be.