ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a research project that used a diary-like photo-elicitation method to explore students’ experience of religion and belief in higher education. The strength of this method is that it allowed students to tell their own story, to describe their experience from their own starting point, capturing the complexity of individual religious identity (including non-religious beliefs) together with students’ meaning-making practices on campus. However, due to the visual nature of the method there was an ethical tension between giving the students voice and their protection, particularly those that may feel conscious of their visibility and those that may wish to keep their religious identity and practices hidden from their peers. This ethical dimension is explored in this chapter, together with how the students negotiated this. What was seen is that the method allowed the students to participate on their own terms, with students creating their photographs within their own time frame, and sharing them at their own level of disclosure: ranging from the inclusion of selfies, to self-censored selfies, to withholding photographs altogether.
