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Dear friends and colleagues,

This week we would like to welcome three new Senior Research Fellows to our KFG and say farewell to two Senior Research Fellows. We also would like to draw your attention to a new edition of our KFG colloquium as well as to a new entry in our Bulletin. Besides that, we would like to announce a conference to you and, finally, we have a recommendation for a TV documentary.

Enjoy and have a good week!

Fellows at KFG: Welcome and Farewell

We warmly welcome three new Senior Research Fellows to KFG: Katharina Wilkens (left) will be working on her project with the title “Ancestor Spirits in Secular Society – Negotiating Agency, Space and Heritage in Africa and Beyond”. Peter Kneitz (middle) will be focusing on his project “Negotiating the Boundaries of the Secular State Project on Madagascar: The Trend towards Institutionalization and Heritagization of fihavanana gasy (Malagasy solidarity) since Independence”. Both Fellows will be staying at the KFG for the next 12 months. Bernd-Christian Otto (right) will be working on his research project on “Psychologisation and Resacralisation Strategies in Western 'Magic(k)' from the 19th to the 21st century”. He will be with us until the end of September 2021.

This month we also say farewell to two Senior Research Fellows: From October to November 2020 and from February to March 2021, Paul S. Landau (University of Maryland, USA) was with us and did research in various archives for his research project on “Moral Space and World Anti-Apartheid”. The fellowship of Sebastian Rimestad also comes to an end; he has been contributing to the KFG since last October with his research project on “Russian Orthodox Concepts of Secularity”. We would like to thank both Senior Research Fellows for the good collaborations and their contributions!

KFG Colloquium: Peter Kneitz on "From the Dance of the Rigids (Antananarivo, 1863) to the Storm on the Capitol (Washington D.C., 2021): Some ideas on Secularization gasy, and Secularity"

We will start our events again next week. Our new Senior Research Fellow Peter Kneitz will start next Wednesday, 7 April in the colloquium with the presentation of his research project “From the Dance of the Rigids (Antananarivo, 1863) to the Storm on the Capitol (Washington D.C., 2021): Some ideas on Secularization gasy, and Secularity”. In his presentation he elaborates how the secular state of Madagascar, principally a French colonial legacy, is subject to a long-standing dynamic of change, linked, among others, to a discourse of a normativity of—religiously fraught—Malagasiness.

The colloquium will take place in a hybrid format (face-to-face AND online). The number of participants who can take part in the event personally is limited to 8 people. Please register for the colloquium via the link in the Calender you find in the member area, if you would like to join in person. Registration for physical attendance will be closed after 8 participants.  First come, first served.

In order to comply with the Corona protection measures, all PRESENT participants must present a negative COVID-19 rapid test on the morning of the colloquium. You can either take the test at home in the morning or here at our offices where we have test kits available. If you prefer to get tested at the office, please be here already at 8:15 a.m.

Also please note that according to the updated hygiene and infection control concept of Leipzig University, from now on in all university buildings medical or surgical masks or a higher-quality respirator (KN95, FFP mask) must be worn and everyday masks are no longer permitted.

7 April | 9:15–11:45 a.m.

Hybrid format | KFG office building, Nikolaistr. 8-10, Room 4.55 + Online via Zoom

New Bulletin Entry on “A Swiss Way to Ban the Veil: Face Covering and the Future of the Secular Order”

For the latest article in our Bulletin, Reinhard Schulze, Director of the Forum Islam and Middle East (FINO) at the University of Bern, comments on the recent vote of the Swiss population in favour of the motion to insert an article into the Federal Constitution, prohibiting the covering of one’s face in public.

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.

“The Conversion of Spaces and Places of Worship in Anatolia” International Conference

Our Associate Member Markus Dreßler points to an international conference entitled “The Conversion of Spaces and Places of Worship in Anatolia”. This conference is organized by the Anatolian Religions and Beliefs Platform and supported by the Etkiniz EU Programme and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The conference is intended to function as a platform for the discussion of the conversion of religious spaces and places of worship from the multi-disciplinary approaches of law, history, politics, anthropology, architecture as well as heritage and urban studies.

Markus Dreßler will contribute to a conference panel on “Hagia Sophia: Interpretations and National Memory” with his talk entitled “The Reconversion of the Hagia Sophia: Interpretations and Silences”. The event will be held in English and Turkish with simultaneous translation.

10 April | 8:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m. (CET)
11 April | 8:15 a.m.–5:15 p.m. (CET)

Online via Zoom (Registration and Link)

TV documentary “Was uns heilig ist” (“What is sacred to us”)

Whether in nature, in meditation or in a religious ritual – all over the world people are searching for the meaning of life. Their spiritual experiences take very different forms depending on their culture. The sociologist Frédéric Lenoir travelled around the world to ask people about their personal approach to "what is sacred to us". The film can be watched in German or French.

3 April | 8:15 p.m. on ARTE TV channel

Also available as video on demand | ARTE media library

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.