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Dear friends and colleagues, 

Today we would like to announce the last colloquium of this year – on 15 December with Mariam Goshadze. Furthermore, our digital workshop on “The Relationship between State and Religion in the Arab and Islamicate Contexts. Civil State, Secular State, Religious/Islamic State” will start tomorrow, and you can still register for the event.

In addition, we have a new entry in our bulletin for you, a recommendation for a lecture as well as news about a scholarship for a KFG fellow. And finally, we have a note on IT security. 

Enjoy and have a good week! 

Anja & Lucy

Next week’s colloquium: Mariam Goshadze on “Secularity, Secularities and Secularism: Testing the Theoretical Quandary in Secular Ghana”, 15 December

Next Wednesday our Senior Research Fellow Mariam Goshadze will present the current draft of her working paper on “Secularity, Secularities and Secularism: Testing the Theoretical Quandary in Secular Ghana”. Our Senior Researcher Magnus Echtler will comment on her presentation.

You can find the relevant reading in our Member Area. As the colloquium takes place online, you will also find information on the zoom connection data there.

15 December | 9.15–11.45 a.m. (CET)

Online via zoom

Online KFG-Workshop “The Relationship between State and Religion in the Arab and Islamicate Contexts. Civil State, Secular State, Religious/Islamic State”, 9–10 December

This week we are hosting a workshop on “The Relationship between State and Religion in the Arab and Islamicate Contexts. Civil State, Secular State, Religious/Islamic State”. The workshop aims at understanding the concepts of ‘civil state’, ‘secular state’ and ‘religious/Islamic state’ and their relation to (the concept/ideal of) democracy in Arab and Islamicate contexts. It will bring together case studies and theoretical reflections and discussions on the three concepts in different disciplines and academic and political contexts in Arab and Islamicate states.

The workshop is organized by our Associate Senior Researcher Housamedden Darwish together with our Associate Member Markus Dreßler.

The event will take place online and you can still register for it. If you wish to attend the workshop, please send us a short inquiry. 

Workshop Dates:

9 December | 9.00 a.m.–4.30 p.m. (CET)

10 December | 9.00 a.m.–1.45 p.m. (CET)  

Online via zoom

New Bulletin Entry: Housamedden Darwish’s Conference Report on “The Formation of the Concepts of Secularity/Secularism in the Arab/Islamicate Worlds”

We would like to draw your attention to the latest entry in our KFG Bulletin: Our Associate Senior Researcher Housamedden Darwish reports on the panel “The Formation of the Concepts of Secularity/Secularism in the Arab/Islamicate Worlds”, which was held at University of Osnabrück from 16 to 18 September. Housam organized and chaired the event as part of the 27th International DAVO Congress.

Our Bulletin gives the opportunity to comment on current political, social or cultural events and developments from the perspective of Multiple Secularities, to place them in a broader context through our expertise or to present alternative perspectives. If you wish to make short, journalistic style contributions to the Bulletin, please contact Johannes Duschka.

Carlsberg Foundation Monograph Fellowship awarded to Dietrich Jung for his book on “Islamic Modernities in World Society”

We are happy to inform you that our Senior Research Fellow Dietrich Jung has received a Carlsberg Foundation Monograph Fellowship for his book project on “Islamic Modernities in World Society” for the year 2022. Congratulations! Dietrich has been with us since September and will stay until the end of December. We are very happy that he has decided to come back to Leipzig for a second stay in September 2022. 

The Carlsberg Foundation Fellowships are awarded to tenured senior researchers within the humanities or social sciences with a project aimed at producing a ground-breaking monograph or advanced Danish doctoral dissertation.

Kolloquium zu Forschungsproblemen der Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas (Colloquium on research problems in the history of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe)

We would like to point to a colloquia series organized by the Chair of Eastern and South-Eastern European History at Leipzig University in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO). During the winter term, an interested audience is invited to an exchange on research problems in Eastern and South-Eastern European History.

On 15 December our Senior Research Fellow Wolfgang Höpken will give an online lecture (in German) entitled  ’Verspätete Verwestlichung’ oder ’Wiederkehr der Götter’? (‘Belated Westernisation’ or ’Return of the Gods’?)

Registration is not necessary.

15 December, 7.00–8.15 p.m. (CET) | Online via zoom

Beware of phishing emails and SPAM

Currently, some of our colleagues are receiving an e-mail from the sender “Karen Howley” asking them to reply and to follow a link included in the e-mail. This is obviously spam. However, we would like to take this as an opportunity to briefly make you aware of how to deal with this safely. Of course, we advise you not to reply to these e-mails and to avoid clicking on the links in these e-mails. In part, these types of e-mails can look quite genuine, but a legitimate sender address usually has a real signature and specific content.

So please keep your eyes open and always check the sender and the recipient line before you reply or click on anything.

If you have any content that you think suits the purpose of the weekly, please feel free to send it to us at multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de.