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Author: urbrel

KFG Closing Conference 2026

The KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (FOR 2779) is organising its closing conference “Religion and Urbanity New Research Paradigms for a Global Perspective?” on the 1-5 June 2026 in Erfurt. Since 2018, the research group “Religion and Urbanity” has challenged established views about urban structures, religious groups and their reciprocal formations. Over 100 Fellows have come together for longer and shorter stays, conferences, workshops and discussions. As the project is slowly coming to an end in the winter term 2026/27, it is time to look back and at the same time look to the future. What has this research perspective achieved? Has it changed the research landscape in the long term, and what needs to be modified and expanded? How can these topics be explored in greater depth or transferred to other areas?

Conference Report: KFG Annual Conference “Making Boundaries”

While the topic of boundaries has received considerable scholarly attention, this conference focussed on the dynamic processes of making, maintaining and modifying or crossing boundaries and brought together scholars from various disciplines discussing case studies from Europe, the Mediterranean and South Asia from Antiquity to today…

Exploring Urban Religion in Poland: The Urban Religion Archive and the Religion Urbanity Mapping Project

This post introduces the Religion Urbanity Mapping (RUM) project. It started in 2021 with a dual focus. First, to rethink the concept of urban religion; and second, to apply this reframed concept in exploring the relatedness of religion and urbanity in the post-socialist CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) context. To date, the latter focus has been overlooked by urban studies and in the study of religion…

Conference Report: Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead

Dealing with the dead and death is a topic that attracts scholars of every period. The universal question of transitioning from one state-of-being into the other represents a basic process applicable to every human being. As we all die one day and become part of the dead, their whereabouts and treatment will eventually affect every one of us. That is why this conference’s topic Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead has a natural attraction to it because all of us will die one day and join the ranks of the dead…

2025 Entries in “Religion & Urbanity Online”

In 2025, there were 16 new entries in the database “Religion and Urbanity Online” so far. They cover the time span from antiquity to modernity, cities as different as Aleppo, Singapore and Sens, and approach religion and urbanity from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, literature studies and the history of religions. Enjoy reading!

14th City Walk: Built Nature

The 16th of April in 2025 was a warm and bright spring day, and a lovely environment for the KFG’s 14th City Walk: “Building Nature.” This program, organized by doctoral students Aileen Becker and Constanze Schaller together with spokesperson of the “Urbanity & Religion” research group Jörg Rüpke, introduced the newly-arrived cohort of fellows, as well as regular members, to some of the finer, greener points in Erfurt’s history.

The KFG and the “Urban Multilingualism” Workshop Series

The KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” has an ongoing collaboration with the research project “Multilingualism in Eurasian Premodern Societies: Social Hierarchies and Space”, which is part of the Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations”. Three workshops are an important part of the “Multilingualism” project…

Indo-German Exchanges in Religion and Aesthetics: Insights from Dr. Isabella Schwaderer

This interview marks the beginning of a series in which Ahmad Ali will be engaging with scholars working on India at the Max-Weber-Kolleg. He is a student of Religionswissenschaft at the University of Erfurt, currently working on the project “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations”.

Workshop: Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead (15-16 May 2025)

Critical studies of death (thanatology) have illuminated how human societies organize spaces of burial according to gender, race, class, sexual preference, and religion. Informed by these works “Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead” introduces how studies of death, especially of persons within groups excluded from systems of power in the living world, illuminate how the structures of power exceed life extending into the afterlives of the dead…