Faith, Feeling, and the Future: Exploring Spiritual Worlds with Dr Gareth Breen

In this episode of Fieldnotes: The Sussex Anthropology Podcast, host Dr Syeda Sana Batool speaks with Dr Gareth Breen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Gareth’s work moves fluidly between transnational religious networks, emerging spiritual academies in China, psychotherapy, and the speculative horizons of AI.They begin with Gareth’s long-term research on the global Christian movement led by Witness Li, then move through China’s grassroots “shuyuan” (spiritual academies), where people seek to rediscover the essence of Chinese civilisation. The conversation also explores how anthropological inquiry can extend into therapy, how psychotherapy and ethnography inform one another, and why AI is now entering spiritual and ethical imaginaries.This episode offers a wide-ranging, deeply thoughtful exploration of belief, healing, and human connection across cultures — and what anthropology can bring to rapidly changing times.