How and why do we creatively make use of the past to forge new identities in the present? How do we negotiate the tension between heritage preservation and engaged ownership? What is at stake in the "musealization" of religion?
Religion and Cultural Heritage is a unique one-year interdisciplinary MA-programme focusing on a major trend at the interface of religion, identity, politics, and heritage studies. It also addresses a gap in critical heritage studies, studying the shifting place of religion in heritage debates.
Heritage and religion are in the news and on the political
agenda both nationally and internationally. In the coming years,
30-80% of religious buildings will lose their original function in
the Netherlands. National and European budgets are dedicating
millions of euros to the development of plans to address vacant
religious heritage buildings. Tourism and pilgrimage to religious
objects, sites, and festivals are booming, which raises questions
about sustainability and impact.
At the same time, heritage has become a significant subject in
contemporary cultural debate. Large-scale migration and
secularization are changing the religious identities of communities
and the way they perceive the past. Urgent new questions are
arising, like how migrant communities can maintain their religious
identities while grappling with the material and intangible
heritage of their new homes? And how does the new diversity affect
the sense of identity and heritage of dominant cultures?
The demands of preservation of at risk material and intangible heritage in the face of war, displacement, population shifts, and climate change are great. How are preservation concerns balanced with local resources?
This programme challenges you to analyse and contribute your own voice to these debates.
You are encouraged to pursue your own interests in your placement. You can choose to do your internship in the Netherlands or abroad. Examples are:
Curious about what you can do during your placement? Check out the blog student Jelle van Binsbergen wrote while he was doing his placement in Kiev.
Read moreBy visiting museums and conferences, we as students were encouraged to engage with professionals from both academic and non-academic disciplines.
After I finished a placement at a museum, I was certain of my choice to follow the Master's degree programme track in Religion and Cultural Heritage. I greatly valued the emphasis on forming a strong theoretical foundation on the one hand, while simultaneously putting acquired knowledge into practice during excursions and seminars on the other. By visiting museums and conferences, we as students were encouraged to engage with professionals from both academic and non-academic disciplines.
This, along with various relevant guest lectures, significantly contributed to the broadening of my career prospects.
For my Master’s thesis, I conducted field research on exhibitions of human remains in museums. More specifically, this was a comparative study of the ethical aspects surrounding such exhibitions in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. What does the law say about displaying human remains in the Netherlands? And how does that differ compared to regulations in the United Kingdom? As well as holding in-depth interviews with museum curators, I observed how human remains were displayed. What I found was that the United Kingdom has a more strict and extensive policy regarding these type of exhibitions, whereas the Dutch law seems significantly less comprehensive on this topic. In my conclusion, I wrote a piece of advice on how the Netherlands could implement a more expansive policy. My supervisors were very enthusiastic and at the moment, we are looking for ways to bring my thesis to the attention of policymakers.
Finally, what I loved during both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree was the atmosphere at our beautiful faculty. The fact that it’s a small faculty contributes to a positive study experience as a whole, as both staff and students are very dedicated to their course units and to one another!
Read moreDiscover new ways of approaching religious built heritage
I am a master's student of Art History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I have just started the third semester of this programme. During the previous one, I had the opportunity to do an academic exchange at the University of Groningen (UG), in the Netherlands. At the UG, I enrolled myself in the Faculty of Theology and Religious studies, where I attended six courses of the first semester of the Religion and Cultural Heritage master programme.
The main goal of the exchange was to improve my formation on cultural heritage topics. Now that I have concluded my exchange, I must say that the goal was achieved and that the overall experience was enriching, not only on an academic level, but also in the personal domain.
I got the chance to discover new ways of approaching religious built heritage, specifically historical churches. Due to a constant decrease of attendance, these buildings find themselves in a crossroads: Finding a new purpose and meaning in the context of a secularized society, or become obsolete.
In order to save a church in its material and historical authenticity, the buildings can sometimes be devoid of their religious function. In consequence, churches become bookshops, bakeries, hotels, or cultural centers, providing a space for meetings and coexistence for specific communities.
I feel grateful for the support that I have received during this process from the people of both UNAM and the UG. I am especially thankful to my tutors: Professor Elsa Arroyo Lemus and Clara Bargellini Cioni (UNAM), who suggested and encouraged me to do this exchange; and Professor Todd Weir (UG), who allowed me the freedom to look for what was best for me, in order to make the most of my academic stay, and who showed concern for my well being from the first day.
I hope the collaboration UNAM-UG will continue growing, not only through the exchange of master and PhD students, but also with the establishment of new and multidisciplinary research projects concerning cultural heritage.
Read moreResearching the changing relationship between the Coca Cola Company and religion
At Theology and Religious Studies, you feel like you're part of a family. Everyone knows everyone, and it's very inclusive. This is why I decided to stay on after my Bachelor's degree in Religious Studies to pursue a Master's degree here as well. I also work as a student assistant and mentor. After completing my Master's degree, I'd love to find a job in the cultural heritage sector. This could be at a school, to teach children about cultural heritage, or at a media corporation.
During my Master’s track, I did a placement at the monastery museum in Ter Apel, where I co-organized an exhibition on how the lives of monks changed during the Reformation in the Netherlands. Some monks changed religious denomination and became Protestant, some resisted until they died, some fled and some were killed. The exhibition ran from August until December 2017. For my Master’s thesis, I am researching the changing relationship between the Coca Cola Company and religion. The Coca Cola Company has always been connected with religion and religious expression, but this relationship appears to be changing. I am doing research into these changes and what the implications are.
I love living in Groningen! There is so much to do and see. In my spare time, I take long walks in the Noorderplantsoen, or at a recreational area called Hoornse Plas, in the south of the city. My evenings are filled with activities in the small bars or cafés in the city centre. I agree with the slogan: Nothing tops Groningen!
Read moreStudying material religious cultures helps us to think outside the box about the nature of lived religious belief itself
According to current estimates, over 300 million tourists visit religious sites every year. The vast cultural, political, religious, economic, and environmental impact of these visits - whatever their motivations may be - is attracting the attention of governmental bodies on all levels, of private foundations and museums , and of industry specialists in tourism and infrastructure.
At the same time, pressures on religious, governmental, and private organizations concerning changing religious and cultural identities, and relating to the long-term sustainability of religious heritage management have leant urgency to the question: How do we engage, preserve and communicate the remains of our religious past?
For these reasons, it is critical that graduates in religious studies and theology be equipped to facilitate and contribute informed voices to public debate about the future of religious heritage. It is also vital for the academic research and faith communities to learn about the ways in which “lay” and “non-expert” participants actively re-appropriate religious spaces, objects, and practices formerly perhaps too narrowly defined as the domain of adherents to religious beliefs on the one hand and trained experts on the other.
Groningen’s MA in Religion and Cultural Heritage is unique in preparing you for this crucial bridge role. You will bring rigorous and critical training in theology and religion to the table in public and private discourse about religious heritage. At the same time you will learn to contribute to the academic study of religious history and to faith communities by communicating and analyzing the interests, questions and challenges that arise from the broader public’s engagement with its own and other peoples’ religious heritage.
I teach courses that engage with material aspects of religion: visual arts, liturgical rites, books, music, and objects, material culture, architecture and archaeology. The courses will provide you with training and hands-on experience of observing, describing, comparing, and analyzing religious objects, spaces, and practices from the past, and in thinking about and questioning what is at stake in their preservation, use, and adaptation in the present. Studying material religious cultures helps us to think outside the box about the nature of lived religious belief itself.
My research centers on the intersection between book history and the history of Christian worship. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, books comprise perhaps the largest group of religious artefacts that survive. I study the design and production of liturgical manuscripts, and, in particular, the material evidence for their intended and actual use. In this way, we can examine a religious book as if it were an archaeological site. By identifying and peeling back layers of evidence of repeated use and adaptation of single book objects sometimes over centuries, we can learn to re-consider what a religious book is for, how it works, and what it might tell us about the communities and individuals that made and used it. It is this careful and patient approach to sustained engagement with all material aspects of religion that I aim to bring to the classroom, fieldwork, and student-lead research.
Read moreReligion lies at the core of every intangible and living culture
Across the globe, the public role of history is expanding. New museums and historical sites are opening, historical tourism is growing, and educational and cultural institutions are increasing their engagement with the past. This requires a new class of heritage experts, who are self-reflective and can contribute to economic and cultural policy formation and to regional planning.
This master’s degree provides students with the theoretical and practical education necessary to take an active role in this exciting sector.
Together with Mathilde van Dijk and Andrew Irving, I teach Religious Heritage at Groningen. Our combined expertise allows us to place Christian heritage in a broad context that includes other religious traditions and even secularism. Through lectures, seminar and field trips, we examine sites, buildings, traditions, rituals, texts and other locations where the past is maintained in the present.
My own research focuses on the configuration of religion in politics and culture. I have written extensively on the interactions of Christianity, Judaism and secularism and their impact on modern intellectual and cultural history, particularly in Germany. I’m currently working on the history of modern worldviews, and planning a future book on the journey of “Weltanschauung/worldview” from 1790 to the present that will take the reader from Germany to the US, Netherlands, UK and the Soviet Union. It will examine Weltanschauung as one of the chief terms through which moderns have experienced and conceived of systems of thought and belief.
The study of cultural heritage in a faculty of theological and religious studies makes Groningen’s master’s degree unique. Theoretically and practically, however, our innovative approach stands squarely within international trends. First, it helps meet the call issued by organizations such as the Unesco for the preservation not just of the physical sites, but also of the “intangible” heritage of world cultures. Religion lies at the core of every intangible and living culture.
Second, the theory of heritage has developed in dialogue with religious studies. Heritage is not just about preserving the past, but giving people places and paths to experience loss. Sites of memory play sacral roles for states, communities and individuals. The study of religion helps us ask important questions of heritage practice: Are heritage sites maintaining religious traditions or repackaging them for touristic consumption? Should they serve as a locations of religious-secular dialogue in a post-secular world?
Read moreClose encounters with the lasting influence of religion
I followed the Master's track in Religion and the Public Domain, but the course units on religious heritage from this track have now been included in the track in Religion and Cultural Heritage. The thing I liked most about the course units was how the present and the past are linked together. They focus in a very concrete way on the position of religion in Western Europe.
You go on a lot of field trips and encounter the lasting influence of religion and the position that it takes in our society from up close, for example by studying the roots of the Devotio Moderna in Deventer or by singing the St Matthew Passion together and thus feeling its impact.
I wrote my Master’s thesis on the phenomenon of ‘Michaeling’: fans following in Michael Jackson’s footsteps through a pilgrimage that brings them closer in spirit to their idol. I studied whether this was a new religious phenomenon, and concluded that the answer to this question is yes. ‘Michaeling’ is a typical example of the various forms that religion can take in our modern, post-secular society. And there is no doubt that this is a genuine pilgrimage, a spiritual experience of the kind that we associate primarily with the Middle Ages. For my research, I studied the experiences of eleven pilgrims and the Michael Jackson shrine in Germany.
According to his fans, Michael Jackson’s core message was to ‘Heal the World’ through love. Some fans feel that Michael Jackson can be seen as a new Messiah, sent by God to show people what is really important, namely love. Michael Jackson is placed by his fans within a very broad spiritual context. The followers I spoke to call themselves spiritual, but they are reluctant to commit to a specific religion. What is remarkable is that most of these fans express very Christian ideas. For his followers, Michael Jackson acts as a kind of mediator, clarifying their prior religious allegiance. It is as if Michael Jackson helps them to transition from theory to religious practice. They integrate Michael Jackson into their belief system, where he comes to play a key role as a spiritual guide, offering his fans concrete guidelines for distinguishing between good and evil and giving shape to their lives. His followers believe that Michael Jackson was severely persecuted and that he suffered tremendously as a result. However, this did not stop him from fighting for his ideals and for his fans, which makes him a true martyr in their eyes.
After I graduated, I went straight to work for the University of Groningen Humanities Support Desk, where I helped organize educational projects for secondary schools. One of the projects I was working on was De Kerk: maak er wat van!, which we set up together with the Historical Groningen Churches Foundation and which focuses on redesignation of church buildings that are no longer used as such. A year after graduating, I started as a PhD-student at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen, further researching the fascinating phenomenon of ‘Michaeling’.
If you do not have a bachelor's degree in either the Humanities or Behavioural and Social Sciences, you will first need to complete a pre-master's programme before you can enter this master's programme. There are several electives you can choose from. Below, you will find the complete programme.
1st semester (30 ECTS)
2nd semester (30 ECTS)
If you have followed minor courses in Theology or Religious Studies, it might be possible to follow a shorter premaster's programme. Please contact our student advisors to see what the options are.
For the pre-master's programme, you will pay a so called compensation in stead of regular tuition fees. This compensation is the same for both EU and non-EU students.
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