Religious Co-existence: Embodied Interactions in Sacred Spaces and Faith Practices

About

This International Symposium will take place at Newcastle University and will explore community/religious coexistence within sacred spaces. A key feature of the Symposium will be the "Shared Sacred Sites" exhibition (to be on campus for a month), a highly successful traveling exhibition that has been showcased in several countries, including France, Greece, Turkey, and the USA [Exhibits — Shared Sacred Sites]. This inspiring travelling exhibition will open with a 3-day symposium (from 13 to 15 January 2025).

The symposium will feature four keynote lectures and presentations of selected papers, responding to our Call for Papers.

The exhibition, designed as an interactive, curated space, will facilitate workshops among stakeholders and the local community to foster awareness and explore possibilities for future collaborations. It is organised as one of a series of events and aims to provide a platform of dialogue between diverse cultural and religious narratives, thus enriching research and educational experience and promoting a harmonious environment. 

In addition to the Symposium, we plan to produce an edited volume and develop a networking proposal on Religious Co-existence.

The Symposium is organised in collaboration with Religions For Peace UK.

Where: Newcastle University (Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom]

When: 13 - 15 January 2025

Organisers: Dr Christos Kakalis and Dr George Tsourous

Call for Papers

Religious place-making is about coexistence through faith practices, emerging as a “corporeal reality” when a profound “space between” opens between different individuals seeking an embodied interaction with the divine. This conference seeks to explore religious landscapes from a vibrant, experiential perspective, acknowledging these spaces as places of co-existence where people from varied backgrounds can find common ground through faith. Sacred places, particularly those shared by diverse communities, can foster various forms of interaction. These can range from peaceful coexistence, with the potential for dialogue between different individuals and groups, to arenas of conflict, where resilience may be tested, depending on geopolitical and historical contexts.

Personal and collective subjectivities, group membership, and affiliation shape how individuals interact with their environments and encounter the divine. Challenging the clear dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, the conference suggests a dialogical relationship between the two, as different (built and natural) things can be active receptacles of the sacred while remaining part of their profane surroundings. This perspective not only dissolves the boundaries between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ but also welcomes the stranger into religious locales, transforming these spaces into forums for dynamic interaction and potential encounters with the divine.

By venturing beyond the traditional dichotomies and embracing a multidisciplinary approach, this conference aims to shed light on the nuanced ways in which sacred spaces serve as arenas/sites of faith, dialogue, and transformation.

The Symposium invites scholars to respond (but not limit themselves) to questions such as:

• How is religious identity expressed through material cultures of embodied topography?
• How can we design around the concept of interfaith dialogue?
• What is the role of mobility (relocating, dislocating, diaspora and so forth) in faith identity formation
• How are politics of religious identity expressed in and projected onto space?
• What is the role of modern technology in the experience and design of (shared) sacred spaces?
• How are issues of religious co-existence in space and time tackled by current pedagogies?

The Symposium aims to open an interdisciplinary dialogue on the examined theme, to be further developed by a number of following events.

Submissions

Proposals for papers should be sent by email to religious.coexistence@ncl.ac.uk by Friday 8 November 2024. Proposals are to comprise an abstract (maximum 300 words) and a short biographical note (maximum 150 words), together with the author’s institutional address and full contact details.