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Dear friends and colleagues,

this week we would like to draw your attention to a our final conference which will mark the end of our eight-year funding period. Further, we want to point to you a interview with Mariam Goshadze as well as a conference on Flight & Migration and another one on The Power to Pardon in Medieval and Early Modern Christianity.

Take care and have a great week!

Foteine & Johannes

Final KFG Conference: Eight Years Multiple Secularities – Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors | 12–14 October, Leipzig

The occasion of this conference is to mark the end of the eight-year funding period (2016-2024) of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” next year. Over the course of these eight years, dozens of fellows from various countries and different disciplines who work on a diverse range of regions and historical focuses have helped us tremendously to discuss, reflect and sharpen our concept of multiple secularities, to underpin it empirically and to theorise it more thoroughly. We are extremely grateful for this highly productive exchange. We want to get together once again with our interlocutors and discuss what has been achieved, to celebrate the encounters made here, and the community that this project has enabled with colleagues worldwide.

On the event website you can find a preliminary schedule, we are working on a more detailed description of the panels and will update the programme in the coming weeks.

We would be delighted to welcome as many guests as possible and to see familiar and new friends and colleagues! If you want to attend, please let us know via e-mail (multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de).

Date: 12–14 October 2023
Venue: Leipzig University

Conference on Flight and Migration. Challenges for Religions and (Post)secular Societies | 12–13 September, Bad Homburg

This year, the Bad Homburg Conference, organised by the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, is dedicated to the topic "Flight and Migration. Challenges for Religions and (Post)Secular Societies" with the participation of renowned international scholars from history, philosophy, religious studies and sociology as well as with an eye to practice through experts from civil society. The conference is committed to a transnational perspective and to questions about how these issues challenge new interpretations of traditional concepts such as territory, border, state and belonging.

The number of participants is limited and attendance is only possible after registration via e-mail. When you register, please indicate on which days you want to attend.

Date: 12–13 September 2023
Venue: Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wintersberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany
Registration Deadline: 8 September

Conference on The Power to Pardon in Medieval and Early Modern Christianity. Exceptions and Diversities | 2–3 November, Münster

In the medieval and early modern Christian world, the power to exercise pardon over rigor of justice was one of the strongest manifestations of sovereignty and, as such, it was almost ubiquitous. While the Pope was probably one of the first monarchs to initiate an extensive use of pardon after establishing the Apostolic Penitentiary in the thirteenth century, he was rapidly imitated by lay rulers – kings, princes, and even magistrates – who started to grant letters of pardon for those who petitioned for clemency after committing a crime. For historians and legal scholars, finally, studying the predominant role of pardon in medieval and early modern societies raises the question on how these pardons operated in complex legal systems characterized by a plurality of legal orders, where various means of conflict resolution coexisted, interacted, and sometimes replaced each other, while litigants had to navigate between multiple levels of authorities. The conference is organised by Prof. Ulrike Ludwig (Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism“, University of Münster) and Dr. Quentin Verreycken (University of Louvain).

Date: 2–3 November 2023
Venue: Käte Hamburger Kolleg (Iduna Building), Servatiiplatz 9, 48143 Münster, Germany
Registration Deadline: 15 October

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.