News

The international conference "Radical Orthodoxies", June 8-9, 2021, organized by Luca Di Blasi and Elad Lapidot, seeks an interreligious discussion about the contours of a growing field of intellectual endeavors, which seek to undergird the critique of modernity, to perform postmodernism, by reactivating intellectual traditions considered to be deactivated by the rise of modernity, first and foremost through the discourse of secularism.

Issues of gender play an important and often underestimated role in conflicts with religious dimensions. What are the manifold relations of gender and religion in conflicts? How are discourses and rhetorics of othering shaped alongside gender and religion? How do these relations change in societies which define themselves as secular? The IFK’s 2021 annual conference will give us the opportunity to explore these and further questions with our scientific board and other experts.

Due to health issues, Prof. Scott had to cancel her lecture. We regret this greatly and wish her all the best for a prompt recovery.

Please find here attached the programme of a workshop on the conflict management of emperors and bishops in Late Antiquity organized by the team of project 9. If you are interested to join (via Zoom of course), register with liliane.marti@hist.unibe.ch.

Dr. Lene Fausts preisgekrönte Dissertation "Neofaschismus in Italien" ist soeben im transcript-Verlag erschienen

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5470-7/neofaschismus-in-italien/.

(https://www.frobenius-institut.de/41-aktuelles/770-frobenius-forschungsfoerderungspreis-verliehen).

Und unter diesem Link findet sich ein Radiobeitrag zum Erscheinen:

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/aus-kultur-und-sozialwissenschaften.1147.de.html?drbm:date=2021-01-14

Interactive educational video on "religious" conflicts: An analytical model and three historical case studies

Prof. Katharina Heyden, Dr. Sophie Caflisch and Janine Scheurer from the IRC „Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies" have produced a flashMOOC in cooperation with the ILUB of the University of Bern: https://fcld.ly/flashmoocs

The Annual Conference 2020 was postponed to 20/21 May 2021

Issues of gender play an important and often underestimated role in conflicts with religious dimensions. What are the manifold relations of gender and religion in conflicts? How are discourses and rhetorics of othering shaped alongside gender and religion? How do these relations change in societies which define themselves as secular? The IFK’s 2020 annual conference will give us the opportunity to explore these and further questions with international experts.

Die diesjährige Ringvorlesung, wiederum als Kooperation von Uni Bern und Haus der Religionen, bringt Theorie und Praxis ins Gespräch, wobei der Blick an jedem der Dienstagabende auf eine andere Religion gerichtet ist. Zum Oberthema von Frau und Mann in den Religionen fragen wir, was an der Unterscheidung der Menschheit in zwei Geschlechter theologisch und was kulturell geprägt ist. Wir möchten wissen, wie die verschiedenen Religionen mit der Geschlechterfrage umgehen. Welche Zuschreibungen und Gesetzgebungen finden sich in den heiligen Schriften? Welche gesellschaftlichen Rollen wurden und werden Männern und Frauen in den Religionsgemeinschaften zugewiesen? Und welche Fragen werden aktuell diskutiert? Gibt es in den Religionen Alternativen zum binären Modell der zwei Geschlechter? Welche Auswirkungen haben Geschlechterfragen auf Gottesvorstellungen – und umgekehrt?

The IFK "Religious Conflicts and Coping Strateegies" held its first Writing Day on November 4. It was led by Maria Birnbaum. The opening impulse was given by Genevive Bjorn, academic writing coach of Johns Hopkins University (USA). Afterwards, 7x 25 minutes of concentrated writing was done - each researcher on her own project.

Eindrücke von der Konferenz “Claiming History. The Role of Historical Reasoning in Religious Conflicts” – eine Kooperation der Berner IFK „Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies“ mit dem Istituto Svizzero in Rom. Zwölf Angehörige der Uni Bern waren drei Tage lang in regem Austausch mit italienischen Forschenden und den keynote-speakern Wendy Mayer (Adelaide, Australien) und David Nirenberg (Chicago, USA) über die Bedeutung von Geschichte in religiösen Konflikten in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.

The CSH Science & Religion Forum aims to bring scientists, philosophers and theologians together, once a year, to have constructive, interdisciplinary discussions on a broad range of topics. It is led by CSH Postdoc Dr. Jessica Lampe, who is jointly appointed with the Faculty of Theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Mungunchimeg Batmunkh 

(Institute for the Science of Religion and Central Asian Studies) 

The great Red Protector, April 26, 2019, Budapest, Hungary

This focusses on the protective deity of all Mongolians: „Žamsran” („Jamsran“). In addition, Mongolia's Buddhist protector deities are coming into focus. Protective deities are generally called to deal with conflict situations. The Buddhist tutelary deities of Mongolia are also focused on coping. Guardian deities are generally called to deal with conflict situations. 

Danzanravjaa and Red Protectror, September 12, 2019, Moscow, Russia 

Since the early 2000s the Deities of Mongolian Buddhist have been re-introduced into the Mongolian religious field. Nowadays a couple of Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia worship the “Red Potector”. This paper examines the Mongolian deity “Red Potector”, “Begtse” or Jamsran in his historical and contemporary aspects, with a special focus on the poem of Danzanravjaa “Praise to Red Protector“.

ARNA Conference 2019: Repoliticizing P/AR: From Action Research to Activism

McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada, June 26th to 28th, 2019

lic.phil. Meral Kaya, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Geschlechterforschung IZFG, Universität Bern: 

My research work examines current discourses on religion in Switzerland, focusing on discourses that deal with and negotiate Islam. In these debates the so-called incompability of "the" Muslim culture and religion with "the" Christian Swiss culture is discussed - whereby in both cases a homogeneity is often assumed. The incompability of these two cultures is negotiated on the basis of different categories such as gender and sexuality. The dissertation will not only focus on the discourses, but will also give voice to the racialized people affected by these discourses and trace their resistance strategies. Their counter discourses and resistance strategies - which they develop in this process and which remain largely invisible in dominant discourses - destabilize the identities attributed to them.  

Auf der Tagung „Christliche und islamische Hermeneutik im Dialog" in Basel hält Katharina Heyden einen Vortrag zu „Christlichen Wahrnehmungen und Deutungen des Islam im Mittelalter“

Sabine Hohl (Institute of Philosophy)

Presented at: The Diversity of Human Rights, Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, September 5, 2019

My talk focused on the application of religiously based marriage law in liberal states, particularly laws that are sexist in nature (e.g., different divorce provisions for men and women). Such laws may be applied in otherwise secular states through international treaties, enforcement of private contracts, or acceptance of religious arbitration bodies. My paper investigates whether applying such sexist laws amount to state complicity in human rights violations, and how the state should deal with religiously based marriage law.