Summerschool – Religion: Spaces, Places, and Environments

Following the successful summer school editions in the past years, the eleventh International Summer school is jointly organized by the Center of Religion, Conflict and Globalization, the Honours College of Groningen University, the Philosophical Theological College, Brixen (Italy) and the ISOR (Research in Sociology of Religion), Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona.

In this edition, the Summer School will explore the interactive relationship between religion, urban spaces, and environments. By investigating how sacred places are configurated within urban spaces, the program unpacks how religion is negotiated in the city of Barcelona and its surrounding area. More concretely, students will explore the historical and current religious pluralism of the Barcelona area, exploring the urban artifacts through which this diversity is manifested, contested, or negotiated. Students participating in this summer school will also better understand the relationship between religion and the environment, particularly how religious institutions and communities respond to uncertainties related to climate change and the environmental crisis.

The Summer Course is taught mainly through seminars and will include a fieldtrip. The seminars will be taught by academics with a strong international profile that have both empirical and theoretical expertise on their subjects. The seminars provide a space for in-depth, participatory debate on the ethnographic research that the students have gotten to know through their readings and the presentations of the seminar teachers. Students will have the chance to engage with the study of religion in public spaces through a fieldtrip to the famous pilgrimage site of Montserrat, supervised by Anna Fedele, a specialist on pilgrimage who has done ethnographic research at Marian shrines in different European countries.