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Religious Coexistence

Embodied Interactions in Sacred Spaces and Faith Practices

This international symposium, Religious Coexistence: Embodied Interactions in Sacred Spaces and Faith Practices, took place at Newcastle University between 13 and 15 January 2025 and explored community/religious coexistence within sacred spaces.

Organised by Dr Christos Kakalis and Dr George Tsourous, the Symposium featured four keynote lectures and presentations of selected papers. A key feature of the Symposium was the "Shared Sacred Sites" exhibition; a highly successful travelling exhibition that has been showcased in several countries, including France, Greece, Turkey, and the USA. The exhibition, designed as an interactive, curated space, facilitated workshops among stakeholders and the local community to foster awareness and explore possibilities for future collaborations. 

Call for Papers

Religious place-making is about embodied coexistence through faith practices, emerging as a “corporeal reality” when a profound “space between” is created between an individual and the (divine) Thou. 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, especially those shared between people of diverse backgrounds, can facilitate different forms of interaction ranging from peaceful co-existence -from forums of dialogue between different individuals and groups of people to emerge to arenas of antagonism where resilience of coexistence can be challenged, depending on the geopolitical and historical context.

Personal and collective subjectivities, group membership and affiliation, can shape how individuals interact with their environments and encounter the divine. Challenging the clear dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, the conference suggests the dialogical relationship between the two, as different (built and natural) things can be active receptacles of the sacred while still part of their more profane environment. Such a 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 is politics of religious identity expressed in 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?
Shared Sacred Sites Exhibition

The “Shared Sacred Sites” exhibition, a highly successful travelling exhibition that has been showcased in several countries, including France, Greece, Turkey, and the USA was a key part of the symposium. Designed as an interactive, curated space, the exhibition facilitates workshops amongst stakeholders and the local community to foster awareness and explore possibilities for future collaborations.

Keynote Speakers

Manoël Pénicaud - The Center for the Humanities

Dionigi Albera - The Center for the Humanities

Dr. David Henig - Utrecht Universit

Professor Zeynep Kezer - School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University


Interreligious Encounters and Creative Practice

The second symposium in the series titled Interreligious Encounters and Creative Practice was held at Edinburgh University 19 - 21 January 2026. 

This interdisciplinary event explored how creative practices shape, challenge, and reimagine encounters and forms of coexistence between different faiths. Open to both academic audiences and wider communities, the event invited contributors to reflect on the potential of creative media to interrogate dominant models of religious difference and to offer new perspectives on the lived realities of interreligious interaction, particularly in sacred and contested spaces.

Organised by the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, Religions for Peace UK, and the University of Edinburgh (Social Anthropology & the Alwaleed Centre), the event strengthened connections across architecture, social anthropology, art, film, performance, cultural landscape studies, and related fields. It built on an initiative developed at Newcastle University in close collaboration with Religions for Peace UK, as part of the broader project Religious Coexistence: Embodied Interactions in Sacred Sites and Faith Practices.