This event, ‘Urban spirituality in Central and Southern Africa’, is the second research seminar of the ERC project ‘Comparing the Copperbelt’ based at the University of Oxford. It will focus on expressions of spirituality that emerged in urban twentieth-century Central and Southern Africa. Much has been said on the history of missions in Africa’s rural areas, but little research has so far been done on the role of Christian missions or African indigenous churches in urban areas. This workshop deals with the production, expression and performance of spiritual knowledge and spirituality in the urban environment. It seeks to understand the ways in which mission Christianity was transformed through local cultural concepts in the context of an urban industrialized environment.