Category: Concepts & Theory

The Community as a ‘Sacred Body’ – An Interpretation of the Garden of Epicurus

Our former fellow Enrico Piergiacomi analyses a small fragment of Epicurus’ correspondence. Its an intriguing moment of the intersection between religion and urbanity. The philosopher’s reasoning was based on a theology that allowed to imagine the Epicurean school as a divine settlement, or ‘sacred body’, as well as on a conception of the civic and economic relationship that tries to recreate in the human city the same blessedness experienced by the. Economy and spirituality seem to coalesce a single, peaceful whole.

2024 Joint Conference: Urban Co-Temporalities

In February 2024, the UrbRel group together with the SpatioTemporality group at Erfurt university is organising an international conference on urban Co-Temporalities. The conference focuses on multiple temporalities within an urban environment that appear to coexist. It investigates the question of co-temporalities in the urban setting and asks whether such a concept could prove useful for analyzing the connectivity between co-extensive spaces.

UrbRel Workshop “Urbanity & the formation of religious groups”

How has an ‘urban way of life’ influenced the genesis of different religious and confessional groups? This June, UrbRel postdoc Martin Christ is convening a workshop setting out from this question. The working hypothesis of the workshop is that by considering the mutual formation of religion and urbanity, we can also gain new insights into the phenomenon of religious group formation(s) and find new ways to understand how, when and why, groups formed. The workshop will take place in June in Erfurt.

Conference report: Urbanity. History, Concept, Uses

Our 2022 annual conference was planned as an interdisciplinary event of with innovative format including three parts: a theoretical part on conceptual tools widely used by the KFG, a World Café and lightening talks. It took place in Ettersburg castle (Weimar) and continued on the results of two summer workshops. The conference looked at the concept of urbanity and its possible variations. How do we live (together) in dense urban spaces? How has urbanity been defined so far, how can we contribute to better grasp and describe it?

Take a look at the UrbRel glossary!

Following the 2022 annual conference on “Urbanity – History, Concept, Uses”, we are delighted to publish the first entires of the UrbRel glossary. More entries will follow during 2023, for now we are starting with more space-oriented terms from the first funding phase.

Research foci for the next years

In the winter of 2021/22, the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Religion and Urbanity” (UrbRel) was positively evaluated for a second funding phase and in April 2022 the main committee of the DFG granted a second funding period from 2023 until 2026. During this time, the UrbRel group will continue its work within the chosen temporal and spatial framework of the first millennium BC until today in Europe, the Mediterranean and South Asia. To this end, we have selected three focal areas of investigation and will establish three focus groups: Group formation and segmentation, mercantilisation, and boundary drawing.

2022 Annual Conference on Urbanity

From 16 to 18 November, our annual conference takes place at Ettersburg Castle, close to Weimar. Drawing upon the results of two summer workshops – one on the benefits and pitfalls of typologising cities, the other on morphing urbanities across time and space – the conference has three main parts.

Open-Air Preaching and a Muslim Festival: Religious Rituals, Violence, and Urban Space in mid-19th Century Belfast and early-20th Century Jerusalem

Conflicts between different religious groups were a frequent occurrence in cities of the British Empire, particularly from the Victorian era to the interwar period. The imperial agents had a paternalist and orientalist perspective on these episodes of communal violence and assessed them as uncivilized manifestations of religious fanaticism…

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