Category Archives: Calls for Papers

Call for Papers – Censuses and Surveys: Issues in Religious Self-identification

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Panel at the 12th EASR conference, 3-6 September, Liverpool Hope University

Organised by Dr Abby Day, Chair of SOCREL (Sociology of Religion study group, British Sociological Association) and Dr Bettina Schmidt, Honorary Secretary of the BASR (British Association for Study of Religions)

Visit http://www.socrel.org.uk for more information on forthcoming Socrel events

Self-identification on instruments such as surveys and censuses presents unique challenges and opportunities. The 2011 census for the UK revealed some interesting developments concerning the religious self-identification within the UK, particularly with the continuing increase of people who declare to have no religion. How does the utility of a census compare with, for example, larger surveys, from British Social Attitudes to the World Values Survey and how accurately can such data from any of those instruments represent changing religious landscapes? How does a faith in surveys and censuses manifest itself by discipline, and what impact does this have on our understanding of research methodology and outcomes? We invite to this panel papers discussing this and other issues concerning national census and survey design and data from the UK or any other country. Please send abstracts (app. 150 words) to Dr Abby Day a.f.day@kent.ac.uk and Dr Bettina Schmidt b.schmidt@tsd.ac.uk by 1 May 2013.

Religion, Migration, Mutation

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European Association for the Study of Religions Annual Conference, Liverpool Hope University.
3-6 September 2013
RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION

CALL FOR PANELS AND PAPERS IS NOW OPEN

The 12th EASR Annual Conference will be hosted by the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) at Liverpool Hope University. This will also be a Special Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR).
The conference theme will be RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION.
The conference invites papers and panels that examine what happens to religious beliefs and practices when they are displaced, and what occurs to religions when new cultural practices interact with them. The focus on transformation is not only to be taken in connection with movements of people but panels and papers are invited that deal with the issue of mutation in the broadest sense. We invite scholars from different disciplines to participate in the conference.

RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION is the 12th annual conference of the EASR and the second to be organised in collaboration with the BASR.

Panels will be 2 hours long and consist of 4 speakers (papers should be no more than 25 minutes long, allowing a 20 minute discussion period).
Proposals should include Panel/Papers information: title, abstract for the panel and the individual papers (150 words), any unusual IT required, list of chair, panellists, and abstracts for both the panel and the individual papers.
Individual papers are welcomed.
Submission deadline: 1st June 2013
Proposed Papers and Panels should be sent to the Conference Administrator (Sara Fretheim): frethes@hope.ac.uk

Sociology of Islam, Special Issue on the Gülen Movement

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CALL FOR PAPERS
Sociology of Islam (SOI)
Special Issue on the Gülen Movement (“Hizmet”) in Turkey and the World

Sociology of Islam, a peer reviewed quarterly journal published by BRILL
(http://www.brill.com/publications/journals/sociology-islam),
plans a special issue on Turkey’s Gülen Movement to be published in October/November 2013 (Volume 1, Number 3).

Referring to itself as “Hizmet” (Service), the Turkish network of people and institutions also known as the “the Gülen Movement” (GM) aims to put into practice the teachings of Turkey’s most famous, and most controversial, faith-based community leader, M. Fethullah Gülen. Beginning in the late 1960s, the GM first emerged as a faith revival community whose attractants were inspired by Gülen’s applied articulation of Turkey’s most widespread twentieth century commentary on the Qur’an, the Risale-i Nur Külliyatı (The Epistles of Light) – the collected teachings of “Bediüzzaman” Said Nursi. Expanding throughout the 1970s, many young people of Anatolia were attracted to Gülen’s blend of science and Islam, and of the Islamic faith and national Turkish identity. Taking advantages of political and economic reforms in the 1980s, the GM has since emerged to become Turkey’s most influential faith-based identity community, and has become a primary organizational player in education, mass media, trade, and finance. Its organizational network now spans over 120 countries, and its affiliates now control one of Turkey’s largest media conglomerates, a number of the country’s most globally linked companies, and approximately 1000 math and science-focused schools throughout the world. Moreover, in 1998 Fethullah Gülen moved to the United States, where he now resides in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg. Pennsylvania. Since Gülen’s move to the U.S., loyalists in the GM network have expanded their operations in that country, and are now highly active in intercultural and interfaith outreach, commerce and trade, political lobbying, and charter school education. For these reasons, in addition to assessing the GM’s impact inside the borders of “the new Turkey,” this issue also aims to account for the ways in which the GM’s transnational activities both complement and contradict the network’s collective identity and mission.

Considering its emergence as a source of social power in Turkey, the GM is not without its critics. Since the early 1980s, many news columnists, public intellectuals, and politicians have regularly declared that the GM’s real aims are to slowly and patiently initiate an “Islamic” overall of the “secular” Turkish Republic. Not surprisingly, correlated with the GM’s organizational expansion throughout the world, are the emergence of similar criticisms in Australia, the United States, Holland, Russia, and elsewhere. As they do in Turkey, in many other countries GM affiliates must wrestle with sometimes legitimate, sometimes outlandish, criticisms of their ambiguous organizational strategies and apparently contradictory social, political, and economic aims. In response, GM actors both in Turkey and elsewhere have strategically presented themselves as nothing more than “selfless,” “service oriented” democrats, peace activists, and headstrong advocates for interfaith and intercultural dialogue. To spread this message, they have actively sought to publicize Gülen’s teachings to eager foreign audiences. Their primary strategy has been to sponsor and organize a number of academic conferences that have all led to book publications, which, in turn, have saturated the academic marketplace on the topic of the GM’s growth and impact.

In an attempt to fill a glaring void in the literature on the GM’s collective mobilization, this special issue of SOI hopes to attract well-researched scholarship whose author’s intend neither to promote/praise the activities of actors inspired by Fethullah Gülen, nor to demonize them. Rather, the intent is to publish a volume that contextualizes the GM’s impact from a perspective that foregrounds academic skepticism, critical sociology, and social movements. Original, empirically informed, research-based articles from any discipline are welcome, but papers whose authors focus on the GM from the perspective of social movement studies, political sociology/anthropology, and global political economy will be given priority.

Submission Information: Please submit manuscripts for this special issue via MS Word attachment to the following address: sociologyofislam@yahoo.com. The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2013. Length should be limited to 9000-10000 words including all notes and references (not including figures and tables). Because SOI follows a double blind peer-review process, authors should remove all self-references (in text and in the bibliography). Please include the paper’s title and the abstract on the first page of the text itself. Authors should submit a separate title page that includes full contact information. For initial submissions, all standard social science in-text citation and bibliographic forms are acceptable. All submissions will be evaluated upon receipt and, if judged appropriate, sent blindly to referees for review. Please direct questions and queries regarding this special issue to Dr. Joshua Hendrick (jdhendrick@loyola.edu).

Call for Contributions: Routes and Rites to the City

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Routes and Rites to the City: Temporal and Spatial Diversity in Johannesburg’s Migrant Religions and Rituals

A study by the African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Call for Contributions
The proposed anthropological project — to be completed between March 2013 and June 2014– aims to explore both the temporal and spatial diversity of migrant religious,divination and death rituals in inner-city and Southern Johannesburg. It will seek to explore how this diversity develops as a response to both the spiritual and material insecurities of experiences of migration. The interest in migration conceived broadly — not a bureaucratic category — but aims to explore experiences of mobility, dislocation and distance from familial and ancestral ‘homes’. Hence, it encompasses both South African nationals and non-nationals. We aim here to outline the temporal and spatial diversity of these rituals of different urban spaces which churches occupy (the veld, factories, reclaimed churches and synagogues …) and both the economic and symbolic reasons for this diversity. In this analysis we will also conduct historical research into the uses of these urban spaces and the overlay of different temporal and spatial patterns of migration. We wish to delve into processes of sacralization and desacralization of the urban landscape as it results from disputed access to the urban space and is associated with mobility and migration historically and in its present formations. The book will cover, among other religions and rituals: African Initiated Churches, Pentecostal, Apostolic, Catholic and Methodist churches – but aims to extend beyond a focus on Christianity. In particular we are looking for contributions on ‘traditional’ healing’ and indigenous African religions, Chinese religions, and Islam. The project will focus aroundZone F and Rosettinville, though other areas will be considered.

The outputs of the project will be a book to be edited by Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon (Matthew@migration.org.za) and Dr Lorena Nunez (Lorena.Nunezcarrasco@wits.ac.za ), a multi-media platform, a public symposium/workshop and an exhibition. Participants would be expected to attend a bi-monthly discussion and reading group, to produce materials for online use and to produce a draft chapter by November 2012 and final chapter for presentation in a workshop/exhibition in February 2014, after which the finalmanuscript will be edited.

Technological support and limited research funding is available which will be allocated on a needs assessment. Submissions based on existing research will also be considered.

Please submit proposals with abstract, a CV and a sample of writing (preferably an existing publication) and proposed research costs (please note only research costs and not salaries or time will be paid for) by Friday March 8. Please send proposals via email to Peter Kankonde: Kankondepter@gmail.com, cc’d to Dr Wilhelm-Solomon and Dr Nunez.

RASCEE – CFP

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RASCEE Religion & Society in Central and Eastern Europe – Journal of the International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association (ISORECEA) | ISSN: 1553-9962
http://www.rascee.net

Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe (RASCEE) is an open-access peer-reviewed annual (published in December) academic journal reflecting critical scholarship in the study religion in the region.
Journal Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe is included in Index to the Study of Religions Online (A cross-searchable database and bibliography of journal articles) and in EBSCO Publishing – Academic Search Complete, SocIndex with Full Text and in Central and Eastern European Academic Source., while it is in the review process with Religious and Theological Abstracts, ATLA Religion Databases and ProQuest.

Call for papers
RELIGION IN THE SOCIETIES OF FORMER SOVIET UNION TERRITORIES: ROLES, MANIFESTATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS

In the early 1990s the territories of the former Soviet Union opened up to social and religious innovations. After generations of nurturing the idea of a homogenous society, different states emerged, some of them with homogenous, and some of them with heterogeneous, religious fields, with different ways of living and coping with the new conditions of religious freedom, and with different conceptions of the role of religion in society. Looking back after two decades, we can state that religion in the territories of the former Soviet Union has undergone transformations: from forced secularization, to offering new roles, and having a variety of manifestations within contemporary societies that are marked by modernization, individualization and globalization. Is it possible to talk about a religious revival or not? What are the roles of religion in post-Soviet societies? What are the manifestations of new forms of religiosity? How has religion been transformed and mutated in the last two decades? Which religions have been successful and which have failed? Throughout this period a new generation of social scientists and humanities scholars have grown up, and we are particularly interested in their interpretations of the social situation in the region. How does the new generation of scholars understand and interpret the roles, manifestations and transformationsof religion in the former Soviet Union?

Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to religion in the former Soviet Union. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions from diverse areas of the social sciences, such as: sociology, anthropology, political science, religious studies, history and law, and that focus on the post-Soviet religious landscape and its post-Communisttransformations.

Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe (RASCEE) is an annual, open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal that reflects critical scholarship in the study of religion in the region.
Language: English
Website for the submission of articles: http://www.rascee.net/index.php/rascee
Deadline: June 1, 2013
Contact: Milda Alisauskiene at m.alisauskiene@smf.vdu.lt, or Annika Hvithamar ahvit@sdu.dk
Publication is planned for December, 2013

Religion in Urban Spaces

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Religion in Urban Spaces
April 10/11 2014 in Göttingen

Urban spaces have always functioned as innovative laboratories for new religious movements and spiritualities. Studies on the interdependence <http://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/interdependency.html> e between religion and urban culture, (socio-cultural) space and place and practitioners were published recently (Orsi 1999, Livezey 2000; metroZones 2011, Pinxten/Dikomitis 2012). Still, religious developments in cities remain a marginal field within qualitative social and cultural research. The relationship between urban settings and religious practices hardly come into analytical focus.

The conference will bring the city to the fore in religious research and foster studies that take the meanings of religiosity within the urban context as a central focus. To that end, we take the interdependent terms of religion and religiosity as broad and deliberately blurred analytical concepts, beyond the boundaries of the traditional institutional religions. ‘Religion’ refers here to new or alternative forms of religion and spirituality. One might consider movements such as Neopaganism, Spiritualism, any forms of Esotericism, as well of new practices within dominant belief systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism (e.g. New Age Judaism, Salafism, Pentecostalism, Western Buddhism, etc.). The conference aims for a comparative perspective, drawing attention to the contemporary interplay between diverse practices in appropriating and transforming the urban, and considering the reciprocal influence of the cityscape and pluralist culture on religion.

We welcome researchers from various disciplines, including urban/cultural/social anthropology, European ethnology, migration studies, history, philosophy, architecture, sociology, cultural studies, religious studies, and urban studies.

We are particularly interested in research that explores questions such as:
– How does the specificity of urban culture inscribe itself into new religious and spiritual views and performances?
– How are new forms of religiosity inscribed in urban culture?
-How does religious practice recast the meaning of the urban space?
– What role is played by do urban structure and landscape and architecture?
– How do shared and contested memories of urban pasts figure in the creation of new religious expressions?
– What is the significance of the body as an agent of creation of (sacred) places and spaces within urban settings (i.e. ritual movements, dress codes, singing, visualizing emotions)?
– How do migration, religious self understanding/collective identifications and the city context interrelate?
– Are there any general characteristics of urbanity related to the construction of (sacred) places or religious practices in the city?

The conference will be the basis for an edited volume which will emphasize the need to link studies on present-day cultural religious processes with the study of urbanism to foster a better understanding of contemporary religious and spiritual cosmologies and practices within the urban realm.

The conference will be held on April 10/11, 2014 in Göttingen. Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted via email to Victoria Hegner and Peter Jan Margry by May 30, 2013. All applicants will be informed regarding the acceptance of their proposals by the end of June 2013. We will apply for funding to cover the travel expenses of the participants. Notification of funding should be due by October 2013. The paper`s outline (1-2 pages) should be submitted by March 15, 2014, so that they can be pre-circulated.

Victoria Hegner, Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, University of Göttingen
victoria.hegner@phil.uni-goettingen.de

Peter Jan Margry, Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
peterjan.margry@meertens.knaw.nl

A few titles to frame our endeavor:
Livezey, Lowell (ed.), Public religion and urban transformation. Faith in the city. New York: New York University Press 2000. metroZones e.V. (eds.), Urban Prayers. Neue religiöse Bewegungen in der globalen Stadt. Berlin & Hamburg: Assoziation A 2011. Orsi, Robert A. (ed.), Gods of the City. Religion and the American Urban Landscape. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1999. Pinxten, Rik & Lisa Dikomitis, When God comes to town. Religious traditions in urban contexts. New York: Berghahn Books 2012.

Exploring the Extraordinary 5th Conference

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Exploring the Extraordinary 5th Conference

20th-22nd September, 2013York, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS

Since its inception in 2007, members of Exploring the Extraordinary have organised four successful academic conferences that have brought together researchers from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds. The purpose of these events has been to encourage a wider dissemination of knowledge and research, and an interdisciplinary discussion of extraordinary phenomena and experience. By ‘extraordinary’ we refer to phenomena and experiences that are considered to be beyond the mundane, referring to those that have been called supernatural, paranormal, mystical, transcendent, exceptional, spiritual, magical and/or religious, as well as the relevance of such for human culture.

We are looking for submissions for our fifth conference, and would like to invite presentation proposals on topics related to the above. Please submit a 300-500 word paper abstract to Dr Madeleine Castro and Dr Hannah Gilbert (ete.network@gmail.com) by the 1st April 2013. Accepted papers should be on powerpoint, no longer than 20 minutes in length, and intended for an interdisciplinary audience. Please include contact information and a brief biographical note.

For more information, and to see past schedules and abstracts, visit http://etenetwork.weebly.com or email ete.network@gmail.com

Call for papers – RELIGION, REFORM AND THE CHALLENGE OF PLURALITY – UCSIA Summer School, 25 Aug-1 Sept 2013, Antwerp, Belgium

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Call for applications

2013 UCSIA summer school on “Religion, Culture and Society”
Sunday 25 August – Sunday 1 September 2013
Antwerp, Belgium

In 2013 the UCSIA summer school focuses on the topic of Religion, Reform and the Challenge of Plurality. We will research processes of change that arise in the interaction between religions and societies in contexts of plurality – especially and also in a global world. Where a diversity of religions and societal perspectives are present, identity-claims are problematised, and the understanding of citizenship is evolving. What role can religions play in shaping such societies? How do plural societies affect religions towards changing their own attitudes towards one another and revising their role in society? How do religious convictions and perspectives on citizenship relate to one another? Can one ‘belong’ to various cultures and religions? These challenges can be studied in various areas: changes in the perception and self-image of religions and faith-based organizations (so-called ‘identity-issues”), education, public health management, welfare programs, the relevance of voluntary work, attitudes towards (im)migration, gender and race issues, culture, politics, involvement in the public sphere, etc.

Guest lecturers:
Guest lecturers are José Casanova (Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University, Washington DC), Robert W. Hefner (Boston University), John Hutchinson (London School of Economics) and Louise Ryan (Social Policy Research Centre, Middlesex University, London).

Practical details:
Participation and stay for young scholars and researchers are free of charge.
Participants should pay for their own travel expenses to Antwerp.
You can submit your application via the electronic submission http://www.ucsia.org/main.aspx?c=.SUMMERSCHOOL&n=48426 on the summer school website http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool. The completed file as well as all other required application documents must be submitted to the UCSIA Selection Committee not later than Sunday 28 April 2013!

For further information regarding the programme and application procedure, please have a look at our website: http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool.
Contact:
Sara MelsProject coordinator
UCSIAPrinsstraat 14 2000
AntwerpBelgiumTel: +32/3/265.45.99Fax: +32/3/707.09.31
http://www.ucsia.org
http:///www.ucsia.org/summerschool

Call for Papers: Routes and Rites to the City: Temporal and Spatial Diversity in Johannesburg’s Migrant Religions and Rituals

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Call for Contributions

The proposed anthropological project — to be completed between March 2013 and June 2014 — aims to explore both the temporal and spatial diversity of migrant religious,divination and death rituals in inner-city and Southern Johannesburg. It will seek to explore how this diversity develops as a response to both the spiritual and material insecurities of experiences of migration. The interest in migration conceived broadly — not a bureaucratic category – but aims to explore experiences of mobility, dislocation and distance from familial and ancestral ‘homes’. Hence, it encompasses both South African nationals and non-nationals.

We aim here to outline the temporal and spatial diversity of these rituals of different urban spaces which churches occupy (the veld, factories, reclaimed churches and synagogues …) and both the economic and symbolic reasons for this diversity. In this analysis we will also conduct historical research into the uses of these urban spaces and the overlay of different temporal and spatial patterns of migration. We wish to delve into processes of sacralization and desacralization of the urban landscape as it results from disputed access to the urban space and is associated with mobility and migration historically and in its present formations.

The book will cover, among other religions and rituals: African Initiated Churches, Pentecostal, Apostolic, Catholic and Methodist churches – but aims to extend beyond a focus on Christianity. In particular we are looking for contributions on ‘traditional’ healing’ and indigenous African religions, Chinese religions, and Islam. The project will focus around Zone F and Rosettinville, though other areas will be considered.

The outputs of the project will be a book to be edited by Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon (Matthew@migration.org.za) and Dr Lorena Nunez (Lorena.Nunezcarrasco@wits.ac.za ), a multi-media platform, a public symposium/workshop and an exhibition.

Participants would be expected to attend a bi-monthly discussion and reading group, to produce materials for online use and to produce a draft chapter by November 2012 and final chapter for presentation in a workshop/exhibition in February 2014, after which the final manuscript will be edited.

Technological support and limited research funding is available which will be allocated on a needs assessment. Submissions based on existing research will also be considered.

Please submit proposals with abstract, a CV and a sample of writing (preferably an existing publication) and proposed research costs (please note only research costs and not salaries or time will be paid for) by Friday March 8. Please send proposals via email to Peter Kankonde: Kankondepter@gmail.com,  cc’d to Dr Wilhelm-Solomon and Dr Nunez.

Lived Religion: Studying Religious Practice

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CPF for the annual meeting of the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion which will take place at the University of Leiden 24-25 October 2013 and have as theme Lived Religion: Studying Religious Practice

Outline of theme
The 2013 Annual Meeting of the NGG focuses on lived religion, that is religious practice such as it is actually enacted and religious identities and beliefs such as they are actually held. The opposite of lived religion is thus not ‘dead religion’, but ‘prescribed religion’, the religion of catechisms, canons, and creeds. We invite papers that explore the lived religion of groups and individuals, including the unofficial and everyday dimensions of the great religious traditions, non-institutional and post-Christian religion (e.g., ‘new age’, neo-paganism), and tensions between lived and prescribed religion. The conference welcomes anthropological, sociological, cognitive, and historical perspectives, and we especially encourage papers of a methodological or theoretical nature. The conference aims to advance the study of lived religion by critically and systematically reflecting on the core question ‘how do we approach and theorise lived religion’?

We invite proposals for papers, panels, and posters on lived religion from all theoretical perspectives within the study of religion. In addition, PhD and MA students are given the possibility to present their ongoing research either with a poster or in a paper session that is not related to the conference theme. Deadline for all proposals is 1 June 2013. See detailed calls for papers, panels, and posters below.

We are honoured to present two distinguished keynote speakers:
* Prof.Dr. Ronald Hutton, “Lived Religion in History, History in Lived Religion: The Case of Contemporary Paganism” (speaker confirmed; title provisional)
* Dr. Nathal Dessing, “How to Study Everyday Lived Religion”

A. Call for individual papers
Each individual paper will be given a total of 30 minutes, i.e. 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. We invite proposals from various disciplinary perspectives (the academic study of religion, sociology, anthropology, history, etc.) on lived religion. Topics can include (but are not restricted to):
– Unofficial and everyday religious practices within great religious traditions
– Practices, beliefs, and identities in contemporary, non-institutional religion (e.g., ‘new age’, neo-paganism)
– Tensions between lived and prescribed religion, between specialists and laity, and between theological correctness and theological incorrectness
– Theories of religion focusing on action, activity, or practice (e.g., Weber, Geertz, Bourdieu, Riesebrodt, and Whitehouse)
– Processual approaches to religion: Practicing, experiencing, cognising, and feeling as the core of religion
– Discursive practices as lived religion
– Rituals and religious acts: ritual theory and ritual dynamics
– Religion and material culture
– Lived religion as a theoretical concept
– Lived religion in the past and the historical context of contemporary lived religion
– The interlace of lived religion with media, leisure, entertainment, fiction, and play
– The internet as a new site of religious practice and the methodological challenges it poses
– The study of social organisation beyond the religious group: network analysis, field work, and more
– The methodology of studying religious experience (including altered states of consciousness): seeking a third way between going native and scanning brains

Candidates should submit both an abstract (of max. 150 words) for the programme book and a more detailed proposal (of max. 400 words). Deadline for submitting abstract and proposal for an individual paper is 1 June 2013. Abstracts and proposals should be emailed to NGG secretary Markus Altena Davidsen (m.davidsen@religion.leidenuniv.nl).

B. Call for PANELS
Groups of scholars are invited to submit 3 to 5 papers on similar topics as one coherent panel (1.5-2 hours length, depending on the schedule). Panels should fit into the perspectives outlined above.
Deadline for submitting a panel is 1 June 2013. When submitting a panel, please include in one document both individual abstracts and proposals for the papers (respectively max. 150 and 400 words), as well as a panel abstract (max. 150 words) for the programme book and a more detailed panel proposal (of max. 400 words). Abstracts and proposals should be emailed to NGG secretary Markus Altena Davidsen (m.davidsen@religion.leidenuniv.nl).

C. Call for papers and posterS for off-theme PhD and MA student session(s)
PhD students are invited to propose papers for the perspectives outlined above. Additionally, both PhD students and MA students are cordially invited to submit a poster or a paper for a separate off-theme session. This can be a great opportunity for MA students to report on the results of their MA thesis and for PhD students to present some of their preliminary conclusions. Each individual paper will be given a total of 30 minutes, i.e. 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. Posters should be A1 size and should not include too much text. Make sure to include pictures, graphs etc. to enhance readability. We suggest that posters are accompanied with a number of handouts for people to take. Unfortunately, we cannot help with the printing of the poster. Most universities, however, do offer templates and/or facilities for making conference posters. Abstracts for posters and papers for the off-theme session(s) (max. 150 words) together with a more detailed proposal (of max. 400 words) should be sent no later than 1 June 2013 to NGG secretary Markus Altena Davidsen (m.davidsen@religion.leidenuniv.nl).

Practical Details Organisers.
The Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (Nederlands Genootschap voor Godsdienstwetenschap) in cooperation with Leiden Institute for Religious Studies, University of Leiden.

Organising committee.
Prof.Dr. Kocku von Stuckrad (chair, NGG), Markus Altena Davidsen (secretary, NGG), William Arfman, (PhD representative, NGG), Dr. Wim Hofstee (Leiden Institute for Religious Studies).

Venue. Leiden Institute for Religious Studies, University of Leiden.

Time. 24-25 October 2013. The conference will begin around 14.00 on Thursday the 24th and end around 16.00 on Friday the 25th.

Deadline. Deadline for all proposals is 1 June 2013. Proposals should be sent to the secretary of the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion, Markus Altena Davidsen (m.davidsen [at] religion.leidenuniv.nl).

Registration. Registration costs will be kept as low as possible (and depend on further funding that the organisers applied for). Discounts will be available for members of the NGG and for students. Registration includes coffee/tea breaks, the conference dinner on Thursday evening, and a lunch on Friday. The organisers will help with finding accommodation in various categories. Please check the website for updates and further information.

Homepage. For updates and information, please see the website of the NGG at www.godsdienstwetenschap.org or follow us on Twitter at @NGG_nl.