Category Archives: Workshops

News and Events Reposted from AASR (May/June, 2018)

Here is a set of events, updates, and conferences/calls-for-papers reposted from the website of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (https://www.aasr.org.au/mayjune/)

Events:

Updates:

Conferences / call for papers:

CFP: International Workshop “Religious Contacts in Early Modern Scandinavia 1500-1750”

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) invites papers to be presented at the international workshop “Religious Contacts in Early Modern Scandinavia 1500-1750” to be held 10-11 October 2018 in Bochum, Germany.

The workshop will bring together scholars of religious studies, history and cultural studies from the Northern countries as well as Baltic States, German-speaking countries and beyond to explore further the multitude of religious contacts on and around the Scandinavian Peninsula and the Baltic in Early Modern Age.

Among others we would like to compare case studies of different religious contacts and how they were executed by the actors involved. The focus will be rather on the situation and effect of religious contact than on a single religious group.

Examples to be discussed are among others:
– indigenous religions’ (Sami, Karelian, Inuits of Greenland) encounters with Lutheranism and/or Pietism,
– adaption and local alignments of, or resistance towards ideas derived from Protestant Reformation,
– encounters of Scandinavian colonists with the religious beliefs practiced by native peoples (of North America, Africa, Asia),
– early encounters between Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity in Finland and the Baltic,
– Jewish communities of and Jewish migration towards the Scandinavia peninsula in Early Modern Times,
– the spread of non-theistic Enlightenment ideas in Scandinavia and the Baltic before 1750.

Each participant is invited to present a paper in English.

The paper shall later be published in the Käte Hamburger Kolleg’s peer reviewed online journal Entangled Religions (https://er.ceres.rub.de/). All costs (travel expenses, accommodation, dining) will be covered by the Käte Hamburger Kolleg.

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe is an international research institution directly funded by the German government. It conducts research in the field of religious studies and history of religion that is dedicated to the formation and expansion of religions, the mutual permeation of religious traditions and their densifications into the complex figurations called ‘world religions.’ Find more information here: https://khk.ceres.rub.de/en/

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg welcomes applications including an abstract on the intended paper to be presented (max 1,500 words) and a short notice about the academic affiliation of the applicant. Applications should be submitted electronically to ulf.plessentin@rub.de no later than June 15, 2018.

Call for Papers Understanding urban religion

Call for Papers Understanding urban religion Heritage, public space and governance International Workshop Barcelona, 25-27 October 2018

While sociological research on religion in urban contexts has proliferated in recent years, the city has less frequently been taken explicitly as a relevant dimension in the study of religion. Historically, social scientists considered cities as the epitome of secularization, and predicted that processes of secularization would diminish the role of religion in urban life. However, dynamic and vibrant forms of urban religion have emerged in cities across the world in recent years (Becci, Burchardt and Casanova, 2013). Developments such as rising levels of transnational migration and the growth of new religious movements have contributed to the religious revitalization of contemporary cities.

The diversification of urban religious landscapes is documented by a variety of studies (Knott, Krech and Meyer, 2016; Lanz et al., 2016). All over the world, cities are witnessing a proliferation of non-traditional places of worship of several kinds (Martínez-Ariño et al., 2011; Stolz and Monnot, forthcoming). On the one hand, religious communities have begun to adapt to trends of urban change such as sub-urbanization and de-industrialization by establishing places of worship in shopping malls, former industrial warehouses, newly established industrial estates and other commercial zones. On the other hand, and especially in Europe, a rapidly increasing number of traditional church buildings are closed and repurposed as a consequence of dropping membership and resulting financial pressures. Churches are sometimes demolished, but more commonly they are put to new use: they are handed over to other faith communities, converted into lofts or other kinds of commercial property, or into public and civic facilities such as museums, libraries or art spaces. In many cities, the future and the management of religious heritage has been object of debate and controversy. In recent years, there has also been a proliferation of multi-faith and inter-faith places. These are either construed as unified places that remain architecturally neutral and open to believers and practitioners of all persuasions, or contain symbolic and architectural elements of different religious communities (often the so-called Abrahamic faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism).

At the same time, cities have turned into sites of religious innovation and have become stages for the performing of religious events and celebrations that are parts of urban consumer cultures and contribute to the construction of urban identities and city images. The density of religious actors in the city fosters processes of religious hybridization, transformation and crossfertilization. This vibrant dynamism becomes a fertile ground for cooperation and exchange, but also for conflict. In this context, the governance of religious diversity gains new saliency at the level of cities (Griera, 2012). Municipal authorities, including political as well as administrative actors, pay increasing attention to religious issues and a multiplicity of policy instruments are in place to govern them (Martínez-Ariño, 2017). In addition, urban religious affairs often become the object of public contestation, and generate media and civil society attention (Griera and Burchardt, 2016; Siemiatycki, 2005; Watson, 2005).

The aim of this workshop is to explore the conditions, forms and consequences of the ways urban religion is revitalized, spatialized and governed in contemporary cities. The general topic of the workshop is organized around three sub-themes: heritage, religious expressions in public space, and governance.

Workshop papers should address one or more of the following themes:

1. Religious heritage. The aim of this thematic focus is to discuss cultural, political and power dynamics associated with religious heritage, and explore its role in contemporary cities.
2. Urban religious expressions. This strand explores public religious expressions such as festivals, parades, public prayers and meditations and aims to understand processes of the eventization of urban religion as well as the challenges these presences pose to cities and their dwellers.
3. Governance. Contributions in this third thematic section will look at different articulations of state-religion regimes and political secularism at the urban level.

Abstracts of no more than 250-300 words should be submitted to j.martinez.arino@rug.nl* by 15 June 2018.

Organisers Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria, Canada) Marian Burchardt (University of Leipzig, Germany) Mar Griera (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain) Julia Martínez-Ariño (University of Groningen, Netherlands)

Workshop on religious urbanization in Africa, 11 May

Moral economies of ‘development’ in urban Africa

 

An international research workshop funded by the British Academy/Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) through the RUA project and hosted by SSPSSR, University of Kent

 

Friday 11 May 2018 | The Common Room, Cathedral Lodge, Canterbury, Kent

Programme:

https://rua-project.ac.uk/international-symposium-may-2018/

Places are free, but limited. To book a place and for further information:

please email:   ruaproject@kent.ac.uk

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars from three continents to discuss the intersections and tensions between moral economies of ‘development’, religious urbanisation and social change in contemporary Africa. How are visions of the ‘ideal city’ materially articulated in religious imaginaries, experiences and concrete urban developments? What kind of centralities and peripheries are produced and reproduced through mega-urbanisation and religious place-making? How should development policies and analyses take account of religious dynamics and religious actors in African urban contexts?

 

Speakers include:

Simon Coleman (University of Toronto)

Immaculata Nwokoro (University of Lagos)

Paul-Francois Tremlett (Open University)

Xavier Moyet (University of Toronto)

Aurélien Mokoko-Gampiot (GSRL/CNRS, Paris)

Ben Jones (University of East Anglia)

Marloes Janson (SOAS, London)

Gareth Millington (University of York)

Thomas Akoensi (University of Kent)

Organiser:

David Garbin (SSPSSR, University of Kent)

 

Places are free, but limited. To book a place and for further information:

please email:   ruaproject@kent.ac.uk

Workshop on Transnational and Multicultural Nationalisms

Workshop on Transnational and Multicultural Nationalisms

CERI-SCIENCESPO

27 April 2018

 Transnationalism has become an inevitable development in human experiences imposed by globalization and concerns domains going from the distribution of natural resources to organized crimes and terrorism. Studies for a least two decades have explored transnational phenomenon as migrants’ experiences « here and there », « at home and abroad » and have spread to an interdisciplinary approach. All sorts of networks – economic, cultural and political –connect home and host countries. These networks ensure the transfer of norms, values, and rights and foster a transnational solidarity and where new forms of interaction occur, creating new symbols and engendering identities which seek to assert themselves beyond borders. Transnationalism raises the question of nationalism and territoriality of belonging. Transnational communities are guided by a de-territorialized “imagined geography” that gives rise to a form of transnational nationalism, non territoiral, not bounded.

 

Among many aspects of transnationalism, in particular is of interest for this one day workshop is to clarify what this phenomenon encompasses in terms of nationalism and national identity; how the modes of attachment that we find here relate to the relevant political authorities and how transnationalism relates to multiculturalism. To some the emergence of transnational communities appears as a logical next step to multiculturalism defined as a “politics of recognition”. But for scholars who is advocating a multicultural nationalism, like Tariq Modood for Britain, the key political challenge today is monocultural, populist nationalism and they think that the multiculuralising of national citizenship is a more feasible response than cosmopolitianism or other post-national tendencies.

 

If these variations of nationalism are perceived as challenge to states, studies show that states following their migrants in movement intervene in order to “reterritoiralize” globalized identities. In doing so they compete with a more bottoms-up transnationalism or a vernacular cosmopolitanism as well as with polities re-asserting their national identities, in monocultural or multicultural ways. We seek to understand these alternative and competing nationalisms as responses to migration-based diversity and the interactive dynamics between these political ideas and movements.

 

This one day workshop will bring together scholars who have been working on transnationalism in realtion to multiculturalism, nationalism, and citizesnhip.

 

 10h00 – 12h30

Panel 1: Transnationalism with regard to state and nationalism : conceptual and methodological framework

Tariq Modood, University of Bristol: Multicultural nationalism and citizenship

Riva Kastoryano, Sciences Po – CERI – CNRS: Transnational nationalism and the state

Thomas Faist, University of Bielefeld: Transnational civil society and sate and citizenship

Discussant: Hélène Thiollet, Sciences Po – CERI – CNRS

Pause déjeuner

14h30 – 17h30

Panel 2: Transnational and multicultural politics of integration

Ruud Koopmans, WZB : Assimilation and Multiculturalism

Marco Antonsich, Loughborough University : Multicultural Nationalism : connecting the macro and the micro

Thomas Lacroix : From simultaneity to plurality. Transnationalism in action

Discussant : Hélène Thiollet, Sciences Po, CERI – CNRS

 

Responsables Scientifiques: Riva Kastoryano, Sciences Po – CERI – CNRS et Tariq Modood, Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, SPAIS, University of Bristol

 

Venue details:

https://www.sciencespo.fr/agenda/fr/events-front?event=138

Tariq Modood, MBE, FBA, FAcSS, FRSA

Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy,

Director, University of Bristol Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS)

NEW C0-EDITED BOOK: ‘The Problem of Religious Diversity: European Challenges, Asian Approaches’:

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-problem-of-religious-diversity.html

NEW PAPER: ‘Must Interculturalists Misrepresent Multiculturalism?’

file://ads/filestore/SocSci/spais/sotm/_tariq/Interculturalism/Must%20Interculturalists%20Misrepresent%20Multiculturalism_CMS%20Symposium.pdf

WEBSITES: www.tariqmodood.com

Music workshop

WORKSHOP

WORKSHOP INTRODUCING THE ‘LIVING IN HARMONY’ MUSIC PROJECT AT THE WOOLF INSTITUTE AND OTHER MUSIC PROJECTS WITH AN INTERFAITH ELEMENT

23 APRIL 2018, 2.00PM
WOOLF INSTITUTE, MADINGLEY ROAD,
CAMBRIDGE CB3 0UB

http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/events

Please note the Woolf’s new contact details

Woolf Institute
Madingley Road
Cambridge
CB3 0UB

Office telephone: 01223 761977
Mobile telephone: 07859 883887

Reg Charity No 1069589
Company Limited by Guarantee No 3540878
Registered in England and Wales at the above address

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP: DECOLONISING THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN THE ERA OF INTERNATIONALISED EDUCATION (Singapore, 7th/8th March 2018)

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP: DECOLONISING THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN THE ERA OF INTERNATIONALISED EDUCATION (Singapore, 7th/8th March 2018)

Summary of the Workshop

The social sciences are typically understood as having been formally institutionalised in the manner that we recognise them today in a specific Western context. The significance of this is often overlooked despite it continuing to play a role in shaping approaches to teaching and research in the social sciences today. Nonetheless, there have been numerous scholars, particularly those from the periphery, who have highlighted the ways in which the social sciences remain thoroughly ethnocentric. These scholars argue that the perspectives and contributions of various minorities, particularly non-Western scholars, have been excluded from academic knowledge production. Crucially, this exclusion has not been due to a dearth of erudite non-Western scholarship, but due to historical factors that produced Orientalist hierarchies in imagining which types of scholars produce the most useful knowledge. In recent years there has been an intensification of calls to overcome ‘academic imperialism’ by way of ‘decolonising the curriculum’. This workshop will bring together a diverse and interdisciplinary range of participants to discuss the ways in which the social sciences remain parochial and why. In order to further the discussion in a way that it often isn’t, special emphasis will be placed on theorising innovative proposals that may address the problems that are identified. This FREE workshop will provide an inclusive space for scholars, students and those who are curious to discuss these pressing themes regardless of occupation, status or disciplinary specialism.

Keynote Speakers

Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He is also appointed to the Department of Malay Studies at NUS and headed that department from 2007 till 2013. His books and articles include Ibn Khaldun(Oxford University Press, 2013); Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014), and (with Vineeta Sinha) Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017). His areas of interest are the sociology of Islam, social theory, religion and reform, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, and the study of Orientalism.

Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech, USA. He was educated at Edinburgh University (Ph.D.), Cambridge University (MPhil), and University of Calabar (BSc). He is the author of Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason, London, Pluto Press, 2003; and of Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Towards the Decolonisation of Victimisation, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997, among other works. He directed and produced ‘Shouters and the Control Freak Empire’, winner of the Best International Short Documentary, Columbia Gorge Film Festival, USA, 2011.

When

Wednesday 7th March 2018: 15:00 – 18:30

Thursday 8th March 2018: 11:00 – 16:00

Where

The workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool in Singapore, Block 29B, Tampines Aveune 1, 528694, Singapore.

Registration

Participation in the workshop is FREE. Registration is essential to facilitate appropriate catering and room bookings. There are a limited number of places available which will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, send an email with your name and email address in the body of the email to: ULIS@Liverpool.ac.uk. Please indicate whether you wish to attend on day 1, day 2 or both days. Registration will close on Wednesday 28th February 2018.

Financial Support

Multiple travel assistance grants of £100 are available for scholars attending the workshop that are based in category B and category C countries (as defined by the International Sociological Association: http://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/membership/table-of-economies-by-category/). Scholars who wish to be considered for one of these grants should email ULIS@Liverpool.ac.uk with a brief description of why they wish to attend the workshop. The travel assistance grants will be paid to selected participants on condition of attending all of the workshop sessions.

Programme

Day 1: Wednesday 7th March

15:10 – Audience to be seated

15:20 – Welcome by Dr Leon Moosavi, Director of the University of Liverpool in Singapore

15:30 – Professor Syed Farid Alatas – ‘Decolonising the Social Sciences: Resurrecting Knowledge in the South’

16:15 – Professor Biko Agozino – ‘The Decolonization Paradigm and the Postcolonial Criminology Perspective’

17:00 – Discussion

17:30 – Open buffet with networking opportunity

18:30 – Event end

Day 2: Thursday 8th March

11:00-13:00 – Symposium discussion 1: The problem: In what ways and why are the social sciences ethnocentric? What other forms of exclusion in academia need to be addressed?

13:00-14:00 – Open buffet with networking opportunity

14:00-16:00 – Symposium discussion 2: The solutions: Can the social sciences be decolonised and if so, how? What has already been done that seems to be working?  

16:00 – Event end

————

ALL WELCOME

CFP: Populist politics and the minority voice: British Muslims, extremisms and inclusion

A one-day Muslims in Britain Research Network conference organised in partnership with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London

Date: 19 April 2018

Across Europe and North America populist parties and leaders have surged in recent years, with figures such as Donald Trump and Andrej Babiš and parties such as UKIP and Alternative für Deutschland making significant electoral gains. Although different in important respects, these movements share certain themes, such as emphasis on national self-interest and hostility toward international co-operation, liberal political norms and established news media. In almost all cases this desire to reassert national identity has also involved renewed hostility toward ethnic and religious minorities – especially Jewish and Muslim minorities – as well as toward any frameworks of liberal accommodation that have allowed minorities to participate in public life on an equal footing. In the UK, this was evident in the referendum on European Union membership in 2016, which not only destabilised previously taken-for-granted political and legal frameworks but also contributed to a sustained rise in hate crime, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobia.

This one-day conference on ‘Populist politics and the minority voice’ will discuss the effects of these changes on British Muslims, and how the concerns of British Muslims relate to those of other minority groups as well as wider debates about the future of liberal states, free speech and ‘fake news’. Since at least the 1970s, British Muslims – as a group and alongside other minorities – have been involved in a struggle for rights, for media and political representation and for recognition. What might these struggles look like in the future? What is the future of British Muslim identity, post-Brexit? How might rights and legal accommodations be affected by withdrawal from the EU? How do concerns about rising Islamophobia intersect with concerns about resurgent anti-Semitism and far-right and populist movements? How should debates about Muslims and the media proceed in an era of ‘fake news’? How can standards of debate about minorities be preserved and what can higher education and Muslim institutions contribute?

Abstracts are invited for papers that address any of the conference themes:

  • Muslim activism and populist politics;
  • New media, populism and the representation of Muslims and other minorities;
  • Recognising, opposing and offering alternatives to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other extremisms;
  • British Muslims and national identity after Brexit;
  • Challenges to, and for, principles of tolerance, free speech and accommodation.

Participants will be asked to present their research in a short format as part of a panel. To participate please send an abstract (250 words max) to the email address below by Friday January 19th along with a biographical note of no more than 50 words.

Abstract submissions and any general questions should be sent to the conference organisers at MuslimsinBritainRN@gmail.com.

"Religious? Secular? Re-thinking Islam and Space in Europe" (Workshop: Cambridge, 30 Nov – 1 Dec)

Religious? Secular? Re-thinking Islam and Space in Europe

Overview

Date: Nov 30, 2017 – Dec 1, 2017
Organised by: Mr Chris Moses (University of Cambridge), Mr Tobias Müller (University of Cambridge) and Ms Adela Taleb (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Confirmed key note speakers:

Professor Kim Knott, Professor Riem Spielhaus, Dr Marian Burchardt

This inter-disciplinary workshop presents a welcome opportunity to evaluate questions of space within the study of Islam in Europe, with particular interests in Germany and the UK. It draws together researchers for a two-day event exploring challenges and suggesting solutions for theoretical, conceptual, and methodological debates associated with the topic.
From identity-framed accounts of territory to contests over mosque construction, questions associated with Islam and space underlie major academic and public sphere debates in contemporary Europe. The extent of these enquiries is broad, affecting scholarly topics such as place, networks, and the dynamics of identity, as well as familiar policy issues such as values, migration, and political participation.

This workshop seeks to develop this area of scholarship by engaging with this breadth of both content and approach in a systematic fashion. It draws on and seeks to extend existing work, including theories such as the “Islamisation of space”, dichotomies of “the religious” and “the secular”, and accounts of local Muslim “cultures”. In our experiences as researchers, these perspectives have not always done justice to the complex empirical and conceptual issues involved, such as diversity, time, power, units and scales of analysis, matrices of identity, and the inter-weaving of secular and religious.

The workshop has five main aims:
– To offer an evaluation of “space” as a heuristic tool within the study of Islam in Europe.
– To bring together a diverse series of scholarly projects, in the expectation that this breadth will benefit participants’ respective research undertakings.
– To evaluate and compare various conceptual approaches to space, drawing on the inter-disciplinary character of the workshop.
– To consider the different methodologies researchers have employed when handling issues of space, e.g. ethnography, history, discourse analysis.
– To explore the value and stability (or otherwise) of questions of place.

http://www.daad.cam.ac.uk/workshops/religious-secular-re-thinking-islam-and-space-in-europe

Call for Papers: Brokerage in a diverse Europe: intermediaries, go-betweens and bridges

A workshop will be held on the 12-13 Jan 2018 in London, UK

As contemporary Europe has become ever more diverse due to globalization and international migration, processes of mediation and brokerage have become increasingly central to communication, cooperation, and conflict resolution in a range of political, institutional, and social domains. Whether as religious mediators, ethnic community leaders, diaspora experts or so-called migrant smugglers, middlemen and go-betweens bring together disparate communities and translate across different social fields.

To describe their role, the concept of brokerage is used across a variety of disciplines, including political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, development studies and subfields of each discipline, such as social movement studies, network studies, religious studies, and organizational studies. However, disciplinary boundaries have meant that disparate conceptions of brokerage coexist with limited exchange across research fields.

This two-day multi-disciplinary workshop aims to bring together scholars working on brokerage in different social and political domains with the aim of identifying trends and divergences across various fields. We also seek to share and develop conceptual and methodological frameworks for studying brokerage in a diversifying Europe. We invite paper presentations on the following topics, but are open to any paper addressing brokerage in a diverse Europe: 

  • What are typical characteristics of brokers? Are certain groups or individuals more likely to act as brokers, and if so, why? 
  • What are the conditions of success of brokerage and what leads to its failure? 
  • How do brokers negotiate loyalty and conflicting interests between different social groups? 
  • How does brokerage reinforce or challenge static conceptions of ‘culture’, ‘communities’, ‘borders’? 
  • How can we understand brokers as gendered, racialized and classed subjects? 
  • What is the role of brokerage in the governance of diversity? 
  • What distinguishes brokers from related figures, such as native informants and mediators?

Please submit abstracts between 250 and 400 words by the 15 th of November to avi.astor@uab.cat

The workshop will be held on the 12-13 Jan 2018 in London, UK and is organised by Avi Astor (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Sara de Jong (The Open University/Göttingen University). The workshop is sponsored by the Council for European Studies (CES). There is no registration fee, but participants have to fund their own travel and accommodation.

We seek to develop concrete plans for the publication of a special issue or edited volume on the basis of selected papers presented at the workshop.