Category Archives: Workshops

Seminar on Religious Transnationalism, April 16-17, 2015

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Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to join our 2-day seminar on religious transnationalism on Thursday 16 and Friday 17 April 2015 at VU University Amsterdam.  

Venue: VU University (Metropolitan building, room Z009 and Z007)

Time: 9.30 a.m. till 5.00 p.m. (the programme is attached)

Conveners:

Prof. Dr. Thijl Sunier, department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, VU University

Prof. Dr. Nina Glick Schiller, University of Manchester

General theme

The seminar deals with the contemporary dynamics of transnational religious fields across the world by addressing the shifting configurations between new modes of transnational religious practices on the one hand and evolving forms of nation-building and national domestication of religious communities in a time of growing nationalism en exclusion. Transnational activity of religious communities and social actors is certainly not new, nor is the paradox between people living religious lives, locally and transnationally and states domesticating religions (Glick Schiller et al. 1994). However, emerging new forms of regulatory regimes both at a national and a local level have engendered new forms of transnational activity. The ever changing character of the ‘cosmologistical problem’ (Vasquez et al. 2003) informs and shapes new modes of transnational religious activity.

Keynote address: Prof. Dr. Manuel Vasquez (University of Florida, USA), Thursday morning, 16 April, entitled “Seeng Transnationally:  Religion and the Emergence of New Regimes of Visibility and Discipline.”

Four panels

Transnational religious activism

Pilgrimage

Secular intolerance

Cosmopolitanism and religion

Entrance: free, and open to everyone! Registration: h.l.e.vander.linden@vu.nl

Please find the programme attached. We would appreciate it if you could distribute this invitation among your network and/or students.

We hope to welcome you on 16 and 17 April!

Best regards, on behalf of the conveners,

Heleen van der Linden

The post Seminar on Religious Transnationalism, April 16-17, 2015 appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

CFP: Summer Workshop on Faith-Based Violence

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We would like to draw your attention to the call for applications for the 2015 UCSIA summer school on “Religion, Culture and Society: Entanglement and Confrontation”. This summer school is a one-week course taking place from Sunday 23rd of August until Sunday 30th of August 2015 (dates of arrival and departure). This year the programme will focus on the topic of Is Faith-based Violence Religious?

Topic:

Despite the predicted secularization process that would make religion less salient in the global world, the topic of faith biased violence remains hugely relevant, both from a societal and an academic perspective. Whether the movements are pro-democracy or pro-theocracy, religious movements are often instrumental in political change. Political tensions mapped onto religious discourse may also de-contextualize historical events, mythologize agendas and transform neighbours into ‘others’ while the struggle for ‘Truth’ renders defence into an act of aggression. Given UCSIA’s mission to delve into academically timely and challenging topics we will approach this phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. More specifically, the UCSIA summer school  will investigate both sides of the subject matter: Is religion inductive of or instrumental for violence?

Guest lecturers are Jonathan Fox (Religion and State Project, Faculty of the Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University); Peter Neumann (Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and  International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation); Marat Shterin (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London); & Thijl Sunier (Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam).

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 on the summer school website. The completed file as well as all other required application documents must be submitted to the UCSIA Selection Committee not later than Sunday 19 April 2015.

For further information regarding the programme and application procedure, please have a look at our website: http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool.

Please help us to distribute this call for application among PhD students and postdoctoral scholars who might be interested in applying for this summer school.

For all further information, do not hesitate to contact us on the address below.

Best regards,

Sara Mels

Project coordinator

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Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum Workshop

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Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum Workshop

York University Toronto, 26th-28th May 2015

Early Career Researcher Bursaries:

We have a number of bursaries available for Canada based PhD students and Early Career Researchers to attend and participate in the Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum workshop. These bursaries will cover the cost of your registration, accommodation, all workshop meals and a significant contribution to some or all of your travel costs up to a value of $650 CAD.

‘Early-Career Researcher’ is defined as up to five years post-PhD (or equivalent taking into account career breaks for childcare etc.)

We welcome applications from researchers who are just starting to develop an interest in this field as well as those who existing research directly relates to the project content.

To apply for a Travel Bursary for the workshop at York University, Toronto please send a short 2 -3 page copy of your CV together with a statement of up to 300 words on why you are interested in attending the workshop and how your research intersects with its themes (see below for details) to:

James.Thompson@staff.newman.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is: 16th April 2015

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Conference: Young Muslims Growing up in Scandinavia and the West

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Young Muslims Growing up in Scandinavia and the West

University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

7-8 May 2015

http://sockom.helsinki.fi/ceren/english/newsarchive/youngmuslims_programme.pdf

The two day seminar brings together scholars from all over Europe to discuss young Muslims in Europe. The seminar covers themes from religion, radicalisation, and media to faith and fashion. On Thursday afternoon there will also be a panel discussion with the topic Dreams, Hopes & Hurdles: Young Muslim’s Aspiration for a Good Life. The panel discussion is organised together with the Doctoral Programme in Theology, University of Helsinki.

Please register since the number of seats is limited.

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/59326/lomake.html

The deadline for registration is Wednesday April 22nd.

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Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life

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Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life
The Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv
July 26th –August 8th, 2015

The 2015 Balkan Summer School on Religion and Public Life (BSSRPL) will be devoted to the theme Conversion and the Boundaries of Community. As with previous schools, it proceeds from the idea that religion and other forms of collective belonging are central for the life of both individuals and society, and that our religious communities are often those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas,
moral beliefs and communal loyalties.

The goal of the Summer School is to provide a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its focus is on religion as providing the fundamental terms of moral community and its aim is to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by “differences”. The Balkan Summer School takes up this very real challenge and tries to critically define differences, especially communal and religious differences between people as the starting point of a publically shared life. Its basic aim is to help participants realize their prejudices and question their taken-for-granted assumptions of the other through the construction of a safe social space of exploration and interaction that includes an innovative mixture of academic teaching, experiential field experience (practicums) and affective engagement with the challenges of “living together differently”.

Our 2015 summer school will explore the issue of conversion, (both religious and non-religious), in the Balkans and elsewhere. We will explore conversion in its legal, social, and religious aspects, as well as its place within families, as an aspect of gender identity and as a form of accommodating the power differentials in a given society. Inquiry into different forms of conversion as lived practice in the area of the Rhodope Mountains and the Thracian plain around the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv will serve as the sharp lens of our inquiry. Ultimately, however we shall be focusing on the experience of our own boundaries, preconceptions, lived practices, prejudices and preconceptions – to better appreciate how to live with difference rather than deny, trivialize or abrogate it.

Drawing on over twelve years experience of CEDAR-Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion (www.CEDARnetwork.org) the BSSRPL seeks to bring together fellows from different walks of life and different religious and confessional communities, (as well as those who define themselves as members of no such communities and have no religious identities) to explore these themes together, in conditions of mutual respect and recognition. We look forward to an enriching mix of post-graduate students, professors, NGO leaders, journalists, religious leaders, policy analysts, and teachers from the area of the Balkans, Europe and beyond to join us for the two weeks of the school.  The BSSRPL combines more traditional academic lectures with field-work, practical, experiential learning and more affectively orientated forms of group learning; in a innovative approach to learning that goes far beyond the purely cognitive.

The successful candidates will be expected to fund their own transportation to Sofia, Bulgaria. The BSSRPL maintains a needs-based tuition policy and bursaries are available.

Please send your Application to desislavadimitrova@uni-plovdiv.net or fif@uni-plovdiv.net. The deadline for Applications is 23 February 2015.

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Call for Papers ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS PRACTICE IN THE U.S.

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Writer’s Seminar and Volume on: ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS PRACTICE IN THE U.S.

How do Muslims in the United States practice their religion? Where, when, how and why do they pray, fast during Ramadan, and make pilgrimage to Mecca? What rituals accompany the birth of a child, a wedding, and the death of a loved one? How do they celebrate holidays and mark days of commemoration such as the martyrdom of Husayn? How do U.S. Muslims recite the Qur’an, celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, and praise God?

The growing scholarly corpus on Islam in America includes significant coverage of Muslim American organizations and associations, anti-Muslim prejudice and the politics of Islam, Sufism, the interpretation of Islamic law and ethics, gender and women’s issues, the sociology of mosque attendance, the assimilation of Muslim immigrants, Muslim American public opinion, and the ways that Muslim Americans construct their ethnic and racial identities. But there is a dearth of scholarship on Islamic ritual practice. Scholars, journalists, students, and members of the general public often resort to introductory textbooks to describe the ritual practices and performances of Muslim Americans rather than consulting a body of peer-reviewed scholarship.

This project, which includes a writer’s seminar and a resulting edited volume, will explore in concrete detail how Muslim Americans practice their religion through ritual performance. Drafts of volume chapters will be due on June 1, 2016. Contributors will then gather in early July, 2016, on the campus of IUPUI in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, to comment on each other’s papers. Final drafts, approximately 30 pages long, will be due on November 1, 2016.

Scholars are welcome to use a variety of theoretical approaches, but all chapters should give readers a concrete sense of what it feels like, looks like, sounds like, and smells like (as relevant) to perform the ritual under consideration. So, each chapter should be descriptive as well as analytical. All writing should be accessible to a broad audience (so scholarly jargon, whenever used, must be defined and explained).

Generally speaking, chapters will cover topics such as the pillars of practice, life cycle rites, holidays, food rituals, dhikr, and Qur’an recitation but other thematic approaches to ritual practice and
performance are also welcome.

Contributors to the project so far include: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri on Hajj; Amir Hussain on funerals and burials; Michael Muhammad Knight on Ramadan; Marcia Hermansen on mawlid/milad; and Laury Silvers on congregational prayer.

If interested, please send a brief expression of interest to Edward Curtis, ecurtis4@iupui.edu . Participants will then be invited to submit a brief proposal by May 1, 2015.

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Workshop on ‘Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism’

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Workshop on ‘Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism’:  25 February 2015, Middlesex University

Co-organised by Dominic Pasura SPRC and Marta Bivand Erdal PRIO

http://sprc.info/events/future-events/

 

Place: Middlesex University, Town Hall Committee Room 1

Time: 9am–5.15pm

The workshop is free to attend but you must book a place via Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/migration-transnationalism-and-catholicism-tickets-15550371580

Please note that places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

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Workshop: “Religion and the Political Participation and Mobilization of Immigrant Groups: A Transatlantic Perspective”.

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The Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM) of the University of Liège is pleased to announce the third scientific thematic workshop organized by the working group Citizenship and Political Participation on “Religion and the Political Participation and Mobilization of Immigrant Groups: A Transatlantic Perspective”.  

11 May 2015
CEDEM, University of Liège, Belgium

The scientific thematic workshop will examine the political participation of immigrants in an original perspective. Instead of analyzing it through an exclusive ethnic and racial origin lens, we will focus on the role of religion in the political participation and mobilization of immigrant groups in a transatlantic perspective (Europe-North America). The leading question, of the workshop is: what role does religion play in the political participation and mobilization of immigrant groups in European and North American cities? We don’t want to focus on Muslims but consider Catholics, Protestants, and religions as well as non-religious faith such as secularism.

The papers should cover in priority one of the following topics possibly in a comparative perspective.  However, other topics proposed by the applicants will also be considered.  The topics:

• Electoral behavior of Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc. citizens with an immigrant background
• Political mobilization through churches, mosques and religious associations
• Immigrants and organized secularism
• Music, religion and political mobilization of second and third generations
• Immigrants and anti-religious discrimination
• Trans-religious alliances among immigrants

This workshop is open to professors, researchers, MA students, PhD students. The attendance is free but registration is requested before April 15th 2015. Please send an email to Sonia.Gsir@ulg.ac.be

The intention is to prepare a special issue of a journal including a selection of the papers presented at the workshop. Those interested are asked to send a one-page presentation of their paper to Marco Martiniello by February 8th 2015 : mail to: M.Martiniello@ulg.ac.be

The post Workshop: “Religion and the Political Participation and Mobilization of Immigrant Groups: A Transatlantic Perspective”. appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call for Papers: “Nature and Religion”

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Twentieth Postgraduate Religion and Theology Conference
Theme: ‘Nature and Religion’
University of Bristol

Keynote speaker: Professor Peter Hampson
Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University
13-14 March 2015

The relationship existing between religion and nature manifests itself in numerous ways in nearly all religions. Throughout the centuries, thinking about nature has been perceived both as extremely supportive of and also profoundly damaging to religious belief. This year’s postgraduate conference invites papers exploring all aspects of the theme of nature, including environmental (papers on things such as climate change, food chains), biological (animal welfare, bio-ethics), philosophical and theological subjects (creation-evolution debate, the nature-grace dichotomy), historical (mythical and monstrous animals, the black plague), scriptural (the use of natural metaphors in scripture and  preaching), ethical issues (themes of environmental sustainability, categories of beings/animals, the question of the status of nonhuman beings), inter-personal relationships (gender and sexuality), esoteric, gnostic, and new-age spirituality and the occult, natural religions, issues associated with ontology, hamartiology, anthropology, physics, astronomy and history, politics and sociological issues. We invite papers on these and a myriad of other topics related to religion and nature. All religious topics and religions: Buddhist, Hindu, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Druidism, Rosicrucianism, Bahaism, Shamanism, Atheism, etc will be given equal consideration. As always, papers will
also be accepted on all subjects related to religion and theology.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/gradschool/pg-activity/conferences/twentieth-postgraduate-religion-and-theology-conference/

We welcome paper submissions now!

We will make a proper website to receive papers soon, but in the meantime please send paper proposals to: Dr Jon Balserak at: J.Balserak@bristol.ac.uk.

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Workshop on Methodological Approaches to the Study of Religion

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION
23-27  February 2015
University of Kent
Registrations now open!

This annual programme is designed to give post-graduate students core training in social research in relation to the study of religion. By the end of the programme, you will have an understanding of a range of key issues in designing and conducting research, as well as the potential and challenges of specific research methods. This should give you new ways of thinking about your own research work, as well as giving introducing you to resources and approaches that you will want to explore in more depth after completing this training. Whilst covering issues addressed on more generic social research methods training courses, the content will be designed and delivered by researchers with particular experience in studying religion, enabling us to focus on specific issues and resources relevant to this specific field.

This programme builds on Kent’s experience of delivering a similar intensive training programme, funded by the AHRC, for postgraduate research students in the study of religion in 2010. This project also led to the creation of the ‘Research methods for the study of religion’ website (www.kent.ac.uk/religionmethods) from which some of the preparatory work for this training programme has been set.

The 2015 programme will be led by Abby Day, with an international Academic Team including Lois Lee, Sarah Dunlop, Mia Lövheim, Melissa Caldwell, Sylvia Galandini, Anna Strhan, and Adam Dinham. They will  cover issues such as research design and rigour, visual methods, internet research, ethnography, qualitative research analysis, quantitative methods and resources, action research, making impact, and getting published and funded.

Numbers are strictly limited to encourage hands-on participation.

Students not registered at the University of Kent pay a nominal fee of £100.00 for the week. Accommodation and meals are not included.

For further information please contact
Dr Abby Day, Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent,
Canterbury UK
a.f.day@kent.ac.uk

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