Category Archives: Uncategorized

Religion in the digital age – presentation of the Slovenian research results in Ljubljana

Posted on October 7, 2024 - 1:18 pm by

Authors: Katja Koren Ošljak and Aleš Črnič

On 11. September 2024 the project team from Slovenia held public presentation of the results of the national part of the project. They organised a broader public-facing event on the topic of religion in the digital age in Ljubljana where the research work and results from the recent study of digitalisation of the religious communities in Slovenia have been presented.

The keynote speaker was Marcus Moberg, Åbo Akademi University, with an introductory lecture in the history, evolution and state of the digital religious studies.

The event continued with a round table on Religion and spirituality in the digital age, moderated by Aleš Črnič, Faculty of Social Sciences – University of Ljubljana. Speakers Marcus Moberg and Nadja Furlan Štante, Science and Research Centre Koper, were discussing the topic with the members of the Slovenian Study of Religions Association.

Highlight for the local audience was presentation of the netnographic and ethnographic research of the digitalisation of the three religious communities from Slovenia: The Catholic, Muslim, and Hare-Krishna. Katja Koren Ošljak, Faculty of Social Sciences – University of Ljubljana, presented a netnographic study on the mediatisation of religion and the digitalisation of religious authorities. Taja Fortuna, Faculty of Social Sciences – University of Ljubljana, and Aleš Črnič presented findings from the fieldwork and results of thematic analysis of the interviews on the digitalisation of Slovenian religious communities during the Covid-19 epidemic.

25 people attended the event, including representatives of all three communities studied, including Mufti and a member of the Slovenian Bishops’ Conference. Besides, the event was covered by three radio journalists, and a TV journalist, all coming from the national public broadcasting service.

Registration now open – Recovira Conference

Posted on July 1, 2024 - 7:52 am by

Religious Communities in the Virtual Age:  Practices, Values, Technologies, Boundaries 

28 October 2024, Manchester, England 

Keynote Speaker: Prof Linda Woodhead, King’s College London. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, religious communities across Europe and the world have engaged with the digital world and specific digital technologies in a wide variety of ways. Some have embraced online worship and gathering as a tool for widening or enriching a sense of community. Others have used social media to re-think the boundaries of their work with their wider society around them or to connect with their co-religionists across the world. Still others have consciously avoided digital tools, seeing a spiritual and social potency in in-person gathering that cannot be replicated. But nearly all have had to face the new assumptions and practices of the virtual age that the pandemic made far more universal than they were before. 

How have these engagements with the technologies, practices and norms of the virtual age changed the lives of religious communities? How has it affected their sense of community, their understanding of the borders of membership, or their relationship with the wider world? What has it meant for the means and potencies of collective worship? How has it changed patterns of authority and decision making? How have notions of sacred place and time been affected by the virtual? How do communities navigate notions of ‘appropriate’ or ‘genuine’ in the context of the digital society?  

This conference will bring together scholars investigating these questions in a range of religious communities, from large and dominant ones to established minorities and marginalised or immigrant groups, and from a range of national contexts. It centres around the work of the EU-CHANSE funded project Religious Communities in the Virtual Age (recovira.org), but welcomes other scholars in dialogue with these concerns from fields such as the study of religion, sociology, theology, performance, anthropology, cultural studies and so on.

Register here!

Registration is open now, and until October 13th for in-person attendance and October 25th for online attendance.

With any questions, please contact the project team at recovira@mmu.ac.uk

This conference is sponsored by the Performance Research Group, Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Call for Papers – Recovira Conference

Posted on April 18, 2024 - 7:56 am by

Religious Communities in the Virtual Age:  Practices, Values, Technologies, Boundaries 

28 October 2024, Manchester, England 

Keynote Speaker: Prof Linda Woodhead, King’s College London. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, religious communities across Europe and the world have engaged with the digital world and specific digital technologies in a wide variety of ways. Some have embraced online worship and gathering as a tool for widening or enriching a sense of community. Others have used social media to re-think the boundaries of their work with their wider society around them or to connect with their co-religionists across the world. Still others have consciously avoided digital tools, seeing a spiritual and social potency in in-person gathering that cannot be replicated. But nearly all have had to face the new assumptions and practices of the virtual age that the pandemic made far more universal than they were before. 

How have these engagements with the technologies, practices and norms of the virtual age changed the lives of religious communities? How has it affected their sense of community, their understanding of the borders of membership, or their relationship with the wider world? What has it meant for the means and potencies of collective worship? How has it changed patterns of authority and decision making? How have notions of sacred place and time been affected by the virtual? How do communities navigate notions of ‘appropriate’ or ‘genuine’ in the context of the digital society?  

This conference will bring together scholars investigating these questions in a range of religious communities, from large and dominant ones to established minorities and marginalised or immigrant groups, and from a range of national contexts. It centres around the work of the EU-CHANSE funded project Religious Communities in the Virtual Age (recovira.org), but welcomes other scholars in dialogue with these concerns from fields such as the study of religion, sociology, theology, performance, anthropology, cultural studies and so on. While the focus is on the lives of religious communities in the post-pandemic era and papers are necessarily limited to 10-15 minutes, we are interested in case studies, comparative, and theoretical approaches.  

Please note: This conference will take place in central Manchester. Conference fees, which will include a catered lunch, will be kept to a minimum (under £20). In-person attendance will be limited by the size of the venue. While offsite, online presentation will not be possible for this conference, it will be streamed for those who wish to watch. Online viewing will require pre-booking, which will be free.  

Abstract submissions are due 10th May 2024 

We hope to notify applicants by 31st May 2024 

Please click here to submit an abstract.

Submit Abstract

With any questions, please contact the project team at recovira@mmu.ac.uk

This conference is sponsored by the Performance Research Group, Manchester Metropolitan University. 

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