Church of Sweden’s research days focus on religion's public accessibility

The Church of Sweden will shortly hold its fourth ‘research days’ event. The overall theme of this year’s event will be religion’s public accessibility. Around 40 Swedish and international researchers will give short presentations based on this theme over the two days of the event, which will be held in Uppsala 12-13 October.

The first research days event was held in October 2005 and has since been held every second year. These conferences provide a unique platform for Swedish religious studies research and church-related research. The event this year has four main topics under the general theme of religion’s public accessibility: Religion and Politics, Seeing People, The Church in Society and Religion in Global Society.

Both days will begin with a plenary lecture followed by blocks of seminar sessions of three to four short presentations each. Detailed programme and location information is enclosed (please refer to the associated documentation). Descriptions of the seminar sessions and presentations are available at: www.svenskakyrkan.se/forskning (in Swedish).

Wednesday’s plenary lecture is entitled From the Crusader Cross to Christian Pluralism and will be presented by Catherine Keller, Professor at Drew University, USA. Location: Hotel Gillet. Time: 9.30 am.

Thursday’s plenary speaker is Johannes van der Ven, Professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, who will talk on the subject of From Jerusalem to Athens: Religious Liberty in Deliberative Democracy. Location: Hotel Gillet. Time: 9.30 am.