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Category: Europe

Articles on European case studies from late Antiquity until 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…

The Jewish Town of Izbica: History Inscribed in Space

In June, together with other members of the Urbanity and Religion research group, I went on an excursion to Mühlhausen. Our main aim was to visit the Thuringian state exhibition Freiheit 1525. 500 Years of the Peasants’ War. However, we also had time to take a walk through the beautiful historic town. As we were exploring the town, I came across a Stolperstein in memory of Leopold Löbenstein, who was deported in 1942 and, presumably, died in Izbica. This small town, located around 250 kilometres south-east of Warsaw, served as a transit ghetto during the Second World War, to which many Jews from Western Europe were deported…

Where the Void Touches the City: Subtraction and the Sacred at the Edge of Istanbul

There is a moment, just before arrival, when Sancaklar Mosque is entirely invisible. The sunflower fields thin out. The hum of construction trucks grows louder. Then, a sharp-edged minaret (and nothing more) breaks the horizon. Everything else sinks. Following the slope; downwards instead of upwards. The city has vanished, but something else begins…

How to write the history of religion in the making?

Traditional religious historiography attempts to grasp ‘religions’ in their becoming, possibly their founding, their slow or radical changes – similar to how urban historiography undertook. This brought transformations into view that, in the extreme case, could take on their own form in the splitting and splitting off of religious groups…

Comparing World Religions?

Today, the academic study of religion in the discipline widely called Religious Studies or Religionswissenschaft has developed into a large array of thematical fields and foci, of general approaches and source-specific methods. As such it is ranging from historical and anthropological disciplines through social sciences and economics to philosophies and theologies, either conceived as a proper discipline overlapping with these other disciplines or seen as a subdiscipline to the one or other of them. What I am advocating today is the use of a term defining the traditional object of Religious Studies, namely “religion” and its use for comparison on a global scale…

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…

Urban life in a Roman military camp? Two examples from Switzerland: Vindonissa and Augusta Raurica

A Roman military camp, also known as a castellum or castrum, was a fortified place where soldiers lived and trained. The camps were located wherever the Roman Empire expanded and reached or created borders. They formed the starting point for military actions or were themselves the site of battles. Through their presence, the soldiers influenced the economy and the settlement area in the conquered territories. Many towns were founded by the Romans and still exist today.

‘Of Looseness and Depravity’ – Contextualising Magdalene Asylums

Why was the Seán Mc Dermott St Magdalene asylum – which contained also a Magdalene Laundry – located where it was? And how does this placing relate to discourses on Irish women in the city? The article offers an introduction to the historical context of the Magdalene Laundries in nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland.

Latrines make urbanity ?!

Sara Keller, postdoc with the Religion and Urbanity group, on the link between waste infrastructures and urban lifestyles. Not just prestigious fountains in large public squares, luxurious bath houses and monumental stepwells are outstanding expressions of urbanity: latrines also can contribute to the production of an urban, cultured and sophisticated way of life.

“Thrill” and Intimidation by Means of Light and Darkness in the Pre-Modern Era – The Alter Einlass (Old Entrance) in Augsburg

Our former fellow Vera Henkelmann on the Old Entrance in Augsburg, once famous for its engineering. The power of the council and the city of Augsburg was thus demonstrated here by the ability to restrict sight, especially light, and thus to physically intimidate those entering, even to expose them to the demonic nature of darkness and gloom.

Digging, uncovering, unearthing: Activist and academic approaches to Irish Magdalene Laundries

How did aspects of gender, faith and class interplay in Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries? And which position do they occupy in Irish discourse today? The article charts both activist and academic approaches to the Magdalen Laundries in the past decades, and how aspects of gender, faith and class interplayed in them.