Congratulations to Susanne Rau on joining the Erfurt Academy of Public-Benefit Sciences
Susanne Rau, Professor for Spatial History at the University...
Tagged: Urbanity
Reflections on the Globality of Religion and Urbanity
Since 2018, the ‘Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations’ (FOR 2779) research group within the Max-Weber-Kolleg of Universität Erfurt has hosted over 100 fellows from all over the world to investigate how these two concepts intertwined with one another in more than 80 cities across space and time in Europe, the circum-Mediterranean, and South Asia. After 8 years, the research group has entered its final phase and has invited all former fellows and members back to Erfurt to take stock…
“Lost Places” – 16th City Walk
Our group discovered lost places and urban memory culture within the city of Erfurt during our 16th City Walk on the 15th of April 2026. We visited three former religious or urban places and explored how they are still present, remembered or otherwise used within the urban space of Erfurt today…
Awareness Concept for KFG Closing Conference
It is important to us that the conference fosters an inspiring exchange of ideas. We want to ensure that all participants feel comfortable and can benefit equally from the experience. To this end, we have developed an awareness concept…
Performance of Classical Indian Dance at the KFG Closing Conference by Yashoda Thakore
As part of the closing event of the KFG Closing Conference 2026 Dr. Yashoda Thakore will present Dancing as Memory, Memory as Resistance: The Living Repertoire of the Kalavantulu — a performance lecture that speaks directly to the conference’s central concern with the reciprocal formations of religion, urbanity, memory, and social worlds…
Film Screening: World Station
As part of our closing conference on ‘Religion and Urbanity’, taking place from 1 to 5 June, we will be screening the new film ‘Gare du Monde’ [World Station] by Jacques Lévy, a former and highly esteemed KFG fellow, on Wednesday 3 June…
„Hier gibt es kein Auferstehn“ – Religion und Urbanität in der Oper ‘Die tote Stadt’ (1920) von Erich Korngold
Von weitem ertönt Kindersang, die Kirchenglocken läuten. Feierliche Erwartung macht sich in der festlich geschmückten, mittelalterlichen Stadt breit. Der Gesang schwillt an, Frauen stimmen mit ein, lateinischer Mönchsgesang mischt sich in die hellen Stimmen. Immer lauter wird die Musik, die Prozession zieht heran. Auf dem Höhepunkt schreiten die Priester mit dem goldenen Schrein vorbei, in der sich die kostbare Heilig-Blut-Reliquie befindet. Der Gruppe folgt eine bunte Menge in liturgische Gewänder gehüllter Menschen, rote Chormäntel und Banner stechen hervor. Dieser ekstatische Aufzug lässt niemanden der Umstehenden kalt…
„Healthy Living” Stufu Podcasts (1/2)
Physical and mental health is (and was) an essential dimension of the liveable city. I explored this idea in a Studium Fundamentale (“Stufu”) which I offered in the summer term 2025 with my colleague Dr. Colleen Kron. This Stufu entitled “Healthy Living: History of Spatial Design for Health and Well-being” was opened to students in pedagogy and education, history, religious studies and other Bachelor’s programs of the Erfurt University…
New Entry in KFG Glossary: Belonging
Belonging has become a key concept especially in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, and in migration studies. Competing with the static and rigid concept of identity, belonging offers a more open, processual and relational framework for research…
Kalimpong as Tibet’s Penumbra: Shangri-la, Lhasa, Delhi and Beijing
My interest in writing the hook-ups between the Chinese, Tibetan and Indian towns/cities was to map out the exchanges— politico-historical as well as socio-cultural— between them. Setting up my theodolite, taking measurements as it were, Kalimpong the border town offered a unique vantage point in the eastern Himalayas…
Summer School Report: Performing Religion in the City – Urban Spaces, Interactions and Media
Amidst the plastered narrow alleys of Erfurt’s city centre, fittingly emblematic, it was a piece of light-coloured sandstone that inaugurated the Summer School Performing Religion in the City. Placed on the seminar tables of Erfurt’s International Meeting Centre by co-convenor Isabella Schwaderer, the stone fragments represented the material grounding of Erfurt as a city and its religious life. Retrieved from a ridge close to Gotha, the stone was used to build Erfurt’s landmark, the Erfurt Cathedral, and thereby, symbolically, foreshadowed the Summer School’s theme…
कालीकट की सड़कों पर चलते हुए (III)
Read “Religion and Urbanity Blog” in Hindi! A series of blogposts is available in Hindi. This post is a Hindi translation by Ahmad Ali of the blog post published by Susanne Rau in October 2020: Walking through the streets of Calicut (III).
Reading Religion Economically
The relationship between religion and economy involves materiality, spatiality, and temporality—and not a little imagination. Neither seeing religion as separate from the economy, nor as a superstructural projection of existing class relations, nor again as a commodity subject to rational selection within a “marketplace” of offerings, I propose to reread some “religious” texts and rituals in broadly economic terms and to reflect on the nature of religion more broadly…
„Religion, Urbanity and Sound “– 15th City Walk
Walking around in cities can be connected to hearing multiple things: People chatting, the tram and other vehicles passing by, church bells ringing, maybe even a melody coming from street musicians or an organ playing when passing a church. On our 15th City Walk on the 23rd of October, we explored how those and other sounds and music have an impact on Religion and Urbanity…
CfP: Urbanity and Religion in Film
Our former fellow Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati has opened a call for papers on the topic of “Urbanity and Religion in Film”…
