19.02.2019
Mini Kapoor of "The Hindu" wrote a piece on "Iran through Literature" featuring our Senior Research Fellow Nahid Mozzafari's anthology of contemporary Iranian Literature "Strange Times, My Dear".
more 18.02.2019
With some delay, the current issue of the Journal of Law and Islam (Zeitschrift für Recht und Islam, ZRI) has finally been published. The issue contains, among other interesting articles related to the KFG's research focus, a report on our workshop on "Muslim Secularities: Explorations into Concepts of Distiction and Practices of Differentiation" (18-20 June 2017) by Julia Heilen and Mohammad Magout.
more 14.02.2019In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a 35-year-old woman lawyer, after years of dispute with the local authorities, has succeeded in obtaining an official certificate confirming that she belongs neither to a religion nor to a caste. The woman comes from a very secular family, all her siblings and children have names that do not relate to any caste or religion.
While Indian secularism is theoretically supposed to guarantee freedom of religion, this now enforced freedom of religion presents itself as problematic in everyday life, since the assignment to castes and religions plays an important, self-evident role in many public areas, such as education.
more 13.02.2019
Thomas David DuBois, historian of modern China and transnational Asia, kindly reported for us on the “Law and the Politics of Freedom of Religion in Asia” workshop (12-14 December, 2018) at the NUS Law School, co-sponsored by the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
With seven panels, and a closing roundtable, the event covered a great deal of ground. Papers discussed the evolution of legal ideas and bureaucratic structures, with a significant emphasis on the events or cases that made individual jurisdictions unique. Geographically, papers focused largely on Southeast Asia, but reached from Japan to Pakistan, with some discussion of Australia as a point of comparison with other countries that share a Common law background.
more 06.02.2019
On 12 February at 7 p.m., our Senior Research Fellow Wolfgang Höpken will give lecture on “Secularity as a challenge. Religion, nation and modernity in Bosnian Islam from 1878 to today (Säkularität als Herausforderung Der bosnische Islam von 1878 bis zur Gegenwart)” at the Lew Kopelew Forum in Cologne. He will place particular emphasis on the long lines in the discursive confrontation with secularity in Bosnia and Herzegovina and highlight the multi-layered picture that emerges in relation to Islam in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jutta Lauth Bacas (Head of the Cologne branch of the Society for South East Europe) will moderate the evening. The lecture will be held in German.
more 31.01.2019
The KFG's Senior Research Fellow Edith Franke wrote a Bulletin entry on her recent research trip to Indonesia, reflecting on how a religious dimension is introduced into secular areas through spatial design and naming, serving secular means like increasing turnover by creating the impression of quality.
more 14.01.2019On 27 and 28 July, the East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion will hold its 2nd annual conference at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan with a focus on “East-West Encounters and Religious Change in Modernizing East Asia”. Deadline for abstracts (200-500 words) is 31 January.
more 02.01.2019Our recent Senior Fellow Florian Zemmin calls for papers for an international conference on "The Near Eastern Saddle Period: The Formation of Modern Concepts in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian" (University of Bern, 12-14 June 2019). The conference aims at strengthening the integration of the field of conceptual history of Near Eastern languages by bringing together scholars – of all career stages – already working on conceptual history in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian.
more 01.01.2019
Anindita Chakrabarti will host a workshop on "Religion, Civil Society and Personal (Family) Law Reform in Post-Colonial Nation States: Interrogating Secularity in India and Beyond" at the KFG "Multiple Secularities" on 25 June 2019. The deadline for abstracts of max. 600 words is 15 February 2019. Please send them to: multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de
more 16.12.2018
Regional Conference: Religion in Western Balkan Societies (#ReligionWB) in Tirana, 11 and 12 June 2019. Deadline for proposals: 20 January 2019. Deadline for full papers: 25 March 2019. This regional conference aims to explore threats and opportunities for the role of religion in Western Balkans societies and to contribute to enhancing societal and policy mechanisms to better respond to future challenges in this regard.
more 02.12.2018
The Estonian Society for the Study of Religions is calling for Papers for the 17th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) on "Religion – Continuations and Disruptions" from 25 to 29 June 2019 at the University of Tartu. Individual abstracts can be submitted to any of the pre-arranged sessions as well as to a generic, independent paper section in case one’s paper does not fit with any of the sessions that deal with more specific topics. The deadline for abstracts is 15 December 2018.
more 29.11.2018
Our Senior Researcher Markus Dreßler will join a public panel discussion on "The Sacred and the State in Turkey" on 10 December 2018 at Humboldt-University Berlin (6 p.m., Senate Hall in the Main Building, Unter den Linden 6).
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