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The Research Centre, The Bible and the Visual Imagination, is based in the Theology and Religious Studies Department of the University of Wales Lampeter, and brings together staff and students interested in the visual representation of biblical narrative. The distinctive aims of the Centre are implied in the title: by Bible, we mean both the Old and New Testament as well as Apocryphal literature, under visual we include not only the traditional fine arts but also popular depictions of scriptural piety, and by the term imagination, we want to draw attention to the artist's creativity, the role of the artistic impulse that gave rise to such creative expressions as well as the role of the reader’s imagination in visualizing biblical characters and scenes. The website of The Bible and the Visual Imagination aims to disseminate examples of our research and work-in-progress and we hope that it will help establish lines of communication with the many other centres now engaged in exploring the Bible’s rich cultural afterlives in art, music and literature. Currently, the Centre is engaged in four research projects, reflecting the interests and expertise of its members: Imaging the Bible in Wales (an Arts and Humanities Research Council project) The Bible and Art: Towards an Interdisciplinary Methodology (a British Academy project) The Bible and the Moving Image Biblical Subjects in Christian, Jewish and Islamic Art (with the assistance of the Leverhulme Trust) The Centre enjoys excellent collaborative relations with all the major research and cultural institutions of Wales, many of which house special collections pertinent to the centre’s research focus. Chief among these are: the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, the National Library of Wales, the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth and the School of Art of the University of Wales Aberystwyth. As the project Imaging the Bible in Wales comes to an end in Autumn 2008, we are encouraged that two other ‘Celtic’ research centres, based at University College Dublin and at L’Université de Bretagne Occidentale wish to join us in developing a further research project that would extend the research we have done in Wales to two other ‘Celtic’ regions of Europe. To this end, we are grateful to the Humanities European Research Area (HERA) for a networking grant to allow all three research centres to meet in Autumn 2008 to discuss and refine the scope and nature of a potential joint research programme across all three regions.
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