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EXC 212:  Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures

Subject Area History
Term from 2007 to 2018
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 39235621
 
Final Report Year 2019

Final Report Abstract

The Cluster brought together scholars from the social sciences and humanities to examine the relationship between religion and politics, and how this relationship manifested itselfand changedover time. Our fields of research stretched from antiquity to the present day. They included the polytheism of the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome;the text-based monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in their various forms and interrelationships;and also the religions of Africa, East and South Asia. We fostered our research activitiesby, forexample, systematically promoting methodological and theoretical reflec-tion across our four main research areas, and by greatly intensifying international scholarly exchange. Our research in this field enriched and reoriented international discussionon religion and politics.From the outset, we regarded it as one of the essential tasks of the Cluster to engage in dialogue with the public and to contribute to current political and social debates in a way that enabled people to gaina greater analytical distance from the problems. We therefore established a Centre for Research Communication (Zentrum für Wissenschaftskommu-nikation), a pioneering institution thatbecamea prototype for other universities. The Cluster greatly strengthened research on religion and politics at the University of Münster, and created research structures that will last beyond the date when the Clusterex-pires. It thus created apermanent base forsystematic and interdisciplinary research on religion, andfundamentally changedthe research structures at the University. Important measures were-the establishment of new professorships and early reappointments,in particular in Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Social Sciences (Politics and Sociology of Religion), and Law (Foundations of Law);-the establishment of three centres serving as coordination platforms for future collaboration and the acquisition of third-party funding: (1) Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies,(2) Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies,(3) Center for Religion and Modernity;-the establishment of the Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professorship;-the establishment of a Campus of Religions, bringing together all research and teaching on religion.The Cluster promoted the careers of early-careerresearchers through-structured doctoral training (establishment of a Graduate School under the direction of postdoctoral mentors);-establishment of independent individual projects for postdoctoral researchers, equal to those of professors, and of an independent College of Junior Scholars (Habilitandenkolleg).The Cluster promoted equal opportunity and the reconciling of career and family through -a mentoring programme for female researchers,-a dual-career service, and many other measures.

Link to the final report

https://dx.doi.org/10.2314/GBV:169645848X

Publications

 
 

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