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New Office Hours

Due to the high workload at the moment, Judith Zimmermann (office 4.37), Johannes Duschka and the student assistants (office 4.35) will have a daily consultation time of 1-2 p.m. from now on. Only during this time, the coordination team will be available for consultations without appointments as well as for smaller questions and concerns. We kindly ask you to respect this new regulation so that the coordination team has sufficient time to reliably and carefully take care of your interests and those of the research group.

Appointments for more in-depth talks can of course be arranged at any time and at short notice by e-mail.

Thank you!

Public Lectures

Today, 9 May, Weishan Huang (Chinese University of Hong Kong) will give a talk on “Gender and Space among Buddhist Communities in Shanghai. The Impact of Transnational Taiwanese Religious Movements”. In her lecture she will examine a process of revival of Mahayana Buddhist communities in contemporary Shanghai.
The talk is organised by the Leipzig University’s Sinology Institute and will start at 5 p.m. at Schillerstr. 6, room S202.


On Monday, 13 May, Günter Kehrer (University of Tübingen) will talk about “Marxist critique of religion, atheistic propaganda and the state’s politics of religion”. The lecture is part of the lecture series “Critique of Religion in Past and Present (Religionskritik in Geschichte und Gegenwart)”, organised by Horst Junginger, professor of the study and criticism of religion at Leipzig University.
It will start at 3.15 p.m. in lecture hall 6 at the campus of Leipzig University and will be in German.

Call for Papers

From 3-5 October, the Department for Culture and History of the Middle East of the University of Hamburg, the German Middle East Studies Association for Contemporary Research and Documentation (DAVO), and the Section of Islamic Studies of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft invite to the conference “History, Politics and Culture in the Middle East” at Hamburg University.

Please submit your papers (ca. 300 words) for the open panels by 31 May to amke.dietert@googlemail.com.

Museums Night

On Saturday, 11 May, the joint museums night of the cities of Leipzig and Halle will take place. All in all, more than 400 events will take place in 80 museums in both cities during this night. We would especially like to recommend one event to you: The exhibition “FORGOTTEN ENLIGHTENMENTS - Unknown Stories about Islam in Contemporary Art” in Halle 14 - Centre for Contemporary Art in Leipzig-Plagwitz. The exhibition opens at 6 p.m., at 7 p.m. there will be Moroccan live music and at 8 p.m. there will be a guided tour through the exhibition.

The full programme of the Museum Night as well as useful information such as city maps and the timetable from Leipzig to Halle can be found here.