Nicole Graham is a Lecturer in Ethics and Values. She is developing an international reputation in the emerging field of humour and religion, as a researcher concerned with exploring the ethics of laughter and humour. Prior to joining King’s in 2022, she was an Associate Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and also an Online Tutor at the University of Edinburgh.She received a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Kent (2007) and an MA in Theology from the University of Exeter (2011). Before taking a hiatus from her studies and having a career in HR for a number of years. She returned to academia in 2017 and was awarded a PhD from the University of Kent (2021) for the thesis: Laughing Bodies: An Exploration of Laughter as a Means of Insight.

Research interests and PhD supervision 

Nicole’s research problematises the tendency in scholarship within theology and religious studies to privilege seriousness and, as a result, exclude anything that is deemed to be ‘non-serious’ from its purview. Her first book: Feminism and the Religious Significance of Laughing Bodies develops a theorisation of the place of laughter and, by extension, the “non-serious” in religious and ethical thought and offers a feminist exploration of the ethics of the laughing body. Building on this her current research explores how comedy can offer an effective means of shifting our perspective by challenging and changing our vision of the world.

She would welcome applications from research students in the following areas, in particular:

• Humour and Religion
• Ethics and Values
• Offence and Blasphemy
• Religion and Gender

Selected publications

'(2024) Feminism and the Religious Significance of Laughing Bodies. Oxon: Routledge.(2024).

‘Unraveling The Seriousness Fallacy: A Case For (The Study of) Humor and Religion’, Humor: International Journal of Humor Studies, 37(SI). https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0100

Graham, N. (2022) “Opponent or Advocate?: Exploring Clement of Alexandria’s Attitude(s) Towards Laughter”, in Dijkstra, R. and van der Velde, P. (eds.)

Humour in the Beginning: Cultural Interaction of Laughter and the Comic in the First Phase of Asian religions, Christianity and Islam. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 47-62.

Graham, N. (2020) “Laughing With ’Horrible’ People: Reaffirming Ethical Boundaries Through Laughter”, in Benko, S. (ed.) Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line. Jefferson: McFarland, pp. 210-222.

Teaching

She teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate modules on ethics and values in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

Expertise and public engagement

Nicole is the Media Officer for the Humour and Religion Network.